
aass B»^ElU 

Book .Ql 



MAN HH, 

FROM 



HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 



BY 

/ 



NE^V YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY CALVIN BLANCHARD, 

16 NASSAU STREET. 
^^f 1859. . 



,^\ 

^^^ 



Ehtfred, according to Act of Congress, in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and 
Fifty-nine, by CH. GRAHAM, in the Clerk's OflBce ol the District Court of the 
United States, for the Southern District of New York. 



L. HATJSER, Stereotyper & Pkintkr, 8 North William Street. 



TO THE 

§tv, §mU W. ^xm, 

the worthy and able President of Centre College^ who 
is so perfect and pure, by nature, that no creed can 
spoil him, the following reflections upon the char- 
acter and actions of man, in his short march from 
time to eternity^ are dedicated by his 

Friend, the Author, 

G. GRAHAM, M. D. 



"These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace in the 
■world ; ye shall have tribulation : but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 
But sad it is to ask, how long did this victory, gained through the loving kindness, long 
suffering and death of our blessed Saviour last, and where is the true religion amongst 
the ten thousand diverse and warring creeds, now to be found. It is a most solemn and 
grievous fact, beyond all quibble, that the selfish and vainglorious ambition of leaders 
in the church of Christ, (as has been prophesied by him) have extinguished almost 
every spark of vital religion, and substituted a puritanical and oppressive code of 
dogmas and artistic forms in its stead. A cold and hollow hearted sectarian faith has 
become the merit of a modern membership, which faith, I shall show, from the true 
character of the human mind, is a thing that has no merit whatever in it. For where 
is the great virtue in believing that two and two make four, or the crime in disbeliev- 
ing that they make ten. And thus it is that human opinion or faith is governed alike 
in all things. I shall teach that it is ."Safer to be good and not appear good, than to 
appear good and not be good, and that religion is more in a simple and sincere heart, 
than in the artifice and quibble of the brain. 



Wat thou, Lord, my council be, 

Thy son my only guide, 

That I the path of truth may tread, 

Unlured by human pride. 

Vain glorious man with bigota boast, 

Of partial gifts from thee. 

Has sore oppressed his fellow man 

And pled high heavens decree. 

No prelate, priest or pontiffs power, 

Have I a wish to harm, 

But bV the show of sad misrule, 

Excite their own alarm. 

My voice, I know, will soon be hushed. 

While endless ages roll. 

And mere than this, will then be doomed, 

My never dying soul. 

Can I then, with a conscious quiet, 

Such crushing horrors brave. 

When feeling death within my frame, 

And sinking to the grave. 

Hence, be my doctrines true or false, 

Be them for woe or weal, 

rhey are the dictates of my soul, 

And may my fate forever seal. 



My book shall not be built upon hypotheses or vulgar and degrading prejudices, 
but upon the past history of man, and the demonstrated realities of life. 



CONTENTS. 



Preface ^ 

latroduction ^^ 

Sensation and Perception -. . . 101 

Yolition 146 

Reasoning 229 

Conscience . , > • 2^^ 

Instinct 286 

Strictures upon a Sermon 319 

Review of the Whole Subject 883 

Death 435 

Appendix 439 



The Apostle sayi5 to the Christian Ephesians, Acts XX. 29, 30 : " I know that after 
my departure, shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock ; also of 
your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after 
them." — This fact I shall abundantly show in various parts of the following work. 

I believe with Origen, and am bold enough to teach it ; that " Most of the moral 
evils of the world arise from the libeity the clergy take in interpreting Scripture to suit 
their own views, and in adhering to the externals of religion to the neglect of its prac- 
tical precepts and simple teachings." Knowing, as I do, that not only the life of the 
Christian, but even his rapturous death which wings his soul for eternal joys, is worth 
more than all the wealth and honor that earth can bestow, I can have no other object 
in view than that of maintaining the principles of true religion ; which, I shall show, 
has greatly degenerated through the vanity and ambition of the world. That genuine 
religion, which heals the anguished heart and bids the drooping soul look up with im- 
mortal hope, no longer exists ; but church divisions give to every dying man his un- 
happy dreads and doubts. 



PREFACE. 

Having intended for some time past, to embody my thoughts 
upon the subject of mental and moral Philosophy, and of the 
government of man, into a small volume, bearing the title of 
"Man from his Cradle to his Grave"; but the cares of family 
and the busy scenes of life, not yet admitting of sufficient time, 
I have thought it well to first publish the outhnes in a pamphlet 
— that if there should be any solid objection to my positions, 
they may be discussed and corrected. My introduction will nec- 
cessarily be lengthy, containing the development and workings 
of mens^ minds from the earliest ages to the present time. This, 
I hope, however, will form no serious objection, as I have said 
something in every sentence, bearing upon the practical character 
of man, and worthy of serious consideration. My work, whether 
it may claim merit or not, will certainly be new and peculiarly 
unique. Seeing that more than two thousand years of labor in 
mental science and near the same in religious instruction had pro- 
duced no practical influence whatever, either upon the minds or 
the morals of men, I have determined that it is owing, first, to a 
false position, and secondly, to an improper early education. As 
it will be seen, I propose to discord the study of the dead lan- 
guages — Mathematics, Logic, Rhetoric and Belles-Letters, which 
have heretofore occupied almost the whole of the educational por- 
tion of our lives. These thmgs may enable us to make a pedantic 
and artistic exhibition of ourselves before our fellow-men, but 
never through all time, can they anymore enable us than it does 
the parrot or learned pig to make one step in science or in anything 

1* 



10 PREFACE. 

that will meet the wants of Hfe ; nor can it avail us, when we 
appear naked before the bar of God after having spent a life in 
such follies, to the neglect of those great laws of our own being 
and the principles which bind us to God and to our fellow-men. 

These are primordial truths far above the trite formulae of the 
schools and of the pedagogues' dry and inanimate details of com- 
mon-place things which have a narrowing and stultifying influ- 
ence upon the youthful mind. 

Instead of amusing children with ghost-stories and teaching 
them to give way to their morbid and delusive feelings, we should 
instruct them who and what God is — who and what man is, and 
thus open their eyes to the phenomena- of the world in which 
"we live and move and have our being". Children from then* 
first lispings will ask who made the toy, the house, the tree, the 
horse ? And if indulged by kind lectures and fireside conversa- 
tions, children at fifteen years of age would know more of the 
true relation of things as God has established them, than the 
graduates of the Universities now do. 

This being my firm conviction, I maintain it, though feebly, 
yet with all the mind and earnest soul and strenght that God 
has given me. 

Having the greatest abhorrence even to the semblance of hy- 
pocrisy, I shall write in the first person — I, myself — as being 
more natural and unsophisticated in conversational style than 
"we" — the false word of mock modesty. This "we'' is of Ame- 
rican invention and reminds me of what a distinguished English 
writer says of the extreme modesty of American ladies, "who 
put pantalettes upon the naked legs of their pianos to prevent 
them from being seen". 

Many of my strong points will be not only new, but original, 
and in regard to my mode of treating these, subjects of mental 
and moral philosophy, they are most assuredly sui generis. 

I have never read an author upon the subject of metaphysics 
that did not at once obscure and perplex it by classifications, 
divisions, sub-divisions and technical refinings neither understood 



PREFACE. 11 

by the reader nor tlie writer. And this is the reason, that the 
very name of Metaphysics has fallen into disrepute among sound 
thinkers, as of no utility to the public, when in reality the laws 
of mind are so few and simple that they may be fully under- 
stood by a child in his first lessons. 

In disregard, then, to the humbuggery of deep learning and 
of artistic taste in bookmaking, I have shaped mine in confor- 
mity with kind and simple nature — the author of its existence, 
and to which alone it can look for its favorable reception and fut- 
ure prosperity in this world, for in the next God will take care of 
his own. 

The reason why I have selected the subject of volition for 
this Essay, is that it is the only one in the whole book, to which 
any exception can be taken, although in almost every case I 
disagree with all the authors whom I have ever read. I know 
that in maintaining this subject in its true relations as estab- 
lished by the Supreme, himself, that it requires a God-like for- 
titude and sublime virtue in the author to bear up against the 
outbreak of Puritanical prejudice that will be heaped upon him 
as an infidel and hell-deserving sinner, but the sacred armor of 
truth will be ample against all such billings-gate, violence, and 
reproach. Having a heart to feel for the suffering of every 
sensitive creature that God has made — from the fly of "Uncle 
Toby" up to man, I have spoken with severity against the 
authors of those horrid scenes of bloodshed and cruelty of man 
to man. Nor have I spared the intolerant and erring clergy, 
who have done more injury to the cause of religion by their im- 
moral examples and distracted bickerings than scepticism and 
all other enemies besides. But when I shall have occasion to 
condemn them, it will not be en masse, for that would be to con- 
demn religion, itself. 

We have many truly pious and godly divines, who labor for 
the honor of God and the good of souls, and yet there are many 
foul hypocrites whose love of self and whose worldy passions 
have brought religion into disrespect. We also haye some noble 



12 PREFACE. 

and patriotic statesmen, who serve for the honor and pros- 
perity of their country alone, and it is most grievously and 
ominously true that we are also encumbered by a swarm of 
canting demagogues — the veriest varlets of earth — who pounce 
upon the gangrenous masses as a vulture upon his prey and 
fatten upon the disordered condition of the body politic. 
Against such I shall also level my club. 

In regard to my thoughts — be they worthy or unworthy — 
they are all my own — as I have no recollection of even having 
received a valuable or lasting idea from reading. For, out of 
near one hundred authors, whose works I have looked over, I 
have found but one single thought running through the whole of 
them. All the works of which I have any knowledge, are but 
stereotyped copies of the one original falsehood — the authors 
of Atheism, Deism, MateriaUsm, and Pantheism, who hold to 
the other extreme of error, are not here included in this one-idea 
system. 

The controversy between Berkeley and Hume in regard to 
the actual existence of the objective and subjective world and by 
which Berkeley annihilated one and Hume the other — leaving 
us without either soul or body, shows the two extremes that 
still exist with shght shades of difference, only sufficient to give 
names to the various schools and systems since gotten up and 
now maintained. As General Jackson said in controversy 
with an adversary, " a coward can never write himself into a 
brave man ", nor can a book founded upon false principles argue 
itself into sound conclusions. A learned author might take the 
position that a child could beget itself and had no dependence 
upon either father or mother for its existence. A second 
author holds that the child has no power to create itself, 
nor has any innate or self-existence, but is created by the 
father ; and a third contends that they are both in great error — 
tl)e child depending exclusively upon the mother for its being. 
Now upon those false assumptions numerous large and learned 
books may be written by the various parties, and yet no solid or 



PREFACE. 13 

satisfactory results be obtained — which the sequence of many 
thousand years of metaphysical labors shows. Those positions 
are all false and no learning or labor of man can ever change 
them. My ground-right in this case is not from deep erudition 
or the hypotheses of schools, but from the simple observance 
of nature, (the laws of God,) that it requires the union of both 
father and mother to beget the child. 

Now the laws of mind are just as simple as the laws of gen- 
eration. Our ideas are conceived exactly as the child is, and 
delivered to the world in like manner. For, without such 
delivery they would never be made known to others. 

And now with a full knowledge of these facts and with deep 
and solemn sincerity do I say to the reader that, to this philo- 
sophical error of a self-creating power in the mind may be traced 
all those difficulties both in religion and in moral science, which 
have perplexed the world for centuries past. If we will honestly 
grant the fact that we come into the world without innate or 
conjenital ideas, and that our after-ideas have no power to create 
or beget themselves, the whole enigma of mind is at once 
solved; for, we have nothing more to do than simply to observe, 
as in the case of the child how our ideas are begotten. Against 
the established and sealed law of God, however, men have re- 
belled and given to themselves a self-creating power — a power 
that the God of heaven cannot, himself, possess — as, for 
a thing, to act and bring itself into existence before itself had 
an existence, is wholly inconceivable. Hence God is held to be 
not a self-created 'jut a self-existent being from all eternity — and 
these fundamental facts I shall often recur to in the course of 
my essay — to impress it more fully upon the mind of the 
reader. To take from the mind those creative powers and bring 
it under the universal law of causation is no degradation to 
man, as has been asserted, for we are what we are by 
the will of God whose authority I hold as more honorable 
than the rebellious vanity of man. True, that in one case we 
are little gods of ourselves acting, as we may elect, by our own 



14 PREFACE. 

self-created and independent powers, while in the other we are 
brought under the laws of the great God's own appokitmcni. 
The reader will see before he is through, that this doctrine of a 
self-created will with powers to ,act without a motive — choose 
without a choice and decide without a difference, cannot be sus- 
tained — and further that the mind itself occupies identically 
the same position that the mother does in regard to conception, 
neither having anything more than a mere susceptibility — and 
that the external world is a father that begets through our sen- 
ses every original idea of which the mind is susceptible. It is 
vanity more than piety and a love of self more than of truth 
that gives us all those supercillious and self-important 
conceits. 

It has been objected that if we rest the phenomena of mind 
upon mere reason, and bring it under physical influences, that 
we reduce man to a level with the brute. True, but because the 
brute has a stomach and digestion like man, shall we refuse to 
eat and starve, and in like manner shall we, because of God has 
given to the brute senses through which alone their ideas enter, 
shut ours to the external world and the Paradise of delights 
that bounteous heaven has so profusely and kindly spread 
around us. It is from this self-sovereignty and vain bigotry of 
man, then, I again repeat it, that all the intolerance and cruelty 
of man to man has had its rise. And thus has the world 
for ages been distracted by our delusive feelings and vain 
assumptions that we are Lords of the world and that all 
Creation is for our benefit and must yield to our little views, 
though our views may be as different as our faces and the ob- 
jects that impress us. And thus it is that those arrogant 
upstarts have ever opposed the knowledge of God and of his 
will as received through our senses and by the light and laws of 
nature of which God certainly is the author and cannot 
mislead us. 

It being taught by such vain bigots as above spoken of that 
we possess internal and original powers independent of our brute 



PREFACE. 15 

senses and of the external world, and that those powers are 
above all reason and to be obeyed as the divine oracles and 
sovereign arbiters of men's actions, I must be indulged a little 
farther in exposing such sacrilegious and mischievous principles. 
It is this doctrine of being led by our internal feelings or 
promptings of a divine conscience that begets all the bitter feel- 
ings and feuds between neighbor and neighbor, the legal 
disputes — the Church divisions, and in short it is the author of 
that Satanic intolerance and persecution of man by man — 
amounting to more than all the other grievances of life, besides. 
If the Devil has any agency in the opinions and actions of man, 
this is certainly his strong and favorite hold upon the human 
mind. By this feeling he reduced Eve, and by it he has 
sustained the eternal bickerings and discord in the church 
of God. If we will grant the fact, that we are differently 
organized and that our feelings and opinions are prompted 
by the unavoidable circumstances, under which we are 
placed, we shall be inspu'ed with a truly Christian spirit of 
forbearance and forgiveness one to another, while on the con- 
trary just so long as we are taught to believe that we have 
within us a divine and infallible prompter, we will be assured that 
we are right and that all others who may disagree with us are 
in wilful and punishable errors. Satan has ever flattered the 
vanity of man and puffed him up with the belief, that he is a 
God within himself and not subject to those fixed and fatal 
laws by which all the other departments of God's vast Universe 
are harmoniously governed, and hence the ignorant and arrogant 
assumption, that we have power to frustrate God's immutable 
and eternal designs and yet that we are favorites of God — that 
he has made all things throughout all time for our special benefit, 
and yet that we have kept him in a perpetual fret by undoing 
or causing him to undo all he ever did and to keep up a long 
and doubtful struggle between God and man for supremacy. 
Demented and rebellious, indeed, must be the man, who can be 
reduced by such supercillious and contemptible thoughts. Hence 



16 PREFACE. 

it is that I disbelieve those records of man in the Bible that it 
regretted God sorely, that he ever created man or that he ever 
swore in his wrath to reverse his own designs. If man can be 
brought to see himself aright, he will know that he is but a fated 
link in the eternal cham of Causality — that all things originate 
and terminate in God, who gave the first impulse to life and 
motion and who holds firm and fast to the two ends of this vast 
unbroken and eternal chain that binds his mighty Universe in 
one harmonious and ceaseless round. That all things are held 
in subordination to the accomplishment of one great end — God's 
preconceived plans of creation. 

The wisdom and power of God forbid the doctrine that he 
has made any thing in vain, and that consequently he has not 
regretted and whined, pined and petted at his own works, as 
has been taught by many ignorant Christians and Divines 
whose opinions have been taken from the mischievous mis- 
translations and interpolations of the Bible. 

All things bear a primary and kindred relation and are 
means and ends in the one eternal design. God has not given 
the power of self-creation to any being on earth, nor the ability 
of counteracting and disappointing his sovereign will in the 
realization of his first and final object of creation. It is the 
principles then of the all-sufficiency of creative power and wis- 
dom which I wish to teach, and to show that the doctrines 
that God has done, things which he did not purpose to do, and 
that his laws do not act in harmony and undeviating fate — • 
and farther that those doctrines involve the grossest absurdity 
and self-contradiction. 

My only aim is to teach those demi-gods and haughty 
monarchs of earth, that there is a great God in Heaven from 
whose mandates there is no escape, and that all we have to do 
is to study and obey his eternal and immutable laws as esta- 
blished in nature. 

It is by those rebel dins of discord and pretended heirs of 
Heaven that nature has been excommunicated and wrested 



PREFACE. IT 

from the hands of its creator, and a thieving monopoly of 
God's best blessings to his children instituted and enjoined in 
the cannons of holy faith as essential to salvation. 

Though God gives sunshine, soil and rain to all on earth, 
and spreads his blessings with a profuse and impartial hand 
around us, those elect and especial favorites of God deny to 
nine hundred and ninety-nine in the thousand of their brethren, 
the great boon of heaven — eternal life. Thus have those thrice- 
deformed images of their maker for whom Christ died, crucified 
him anew and dared the wrath of Heaven. The sorrows of 
their poor brother are looked upon with the cold indifference of 
a bigot's heart, and yet can their disdained and toiling slave 
say to them : " In the name of God and by the decrees of 
eternal justice — am I not a brother and a man ?" Yea, and 
cannot the humble dog which he calls a brute, say in piteous 
tones of suffering neglect : " Am I not thy faithful friend ?" 
Tupper, in his proverbial philosophy, expresses himself thus : 

" What hath the generous dog less than reason, 
Or the brute man more than instinct ?'^ 

Oh, we mock monarchs, we worms of the earth and insects 
of an hour ! Soon will we be brought low to commingle with 
our brother emmets in the dust ! Yes, soon — very soon will 
those proud forms be dissolved and mixed with the varying 
elements to be wafted to the extremes of land and sea, and yet 
will God's vast universe, created for the special benefit of us, 
specks of earth, roll on in all his pristine youth and resplendent 
glory through endless time. Gur hope, then, is not in our 
strength or in the favoritism of a just and impartial God, but 
in our weakness, ignorance and humbleness of heart. Then let 
us not take from God nor from our brother more than our 
rights — nor refuse to obey those ordinations of Heaven so 
plainly written upon the face of nature. 

It will be shown that man is brought into this world without 
his knowledge or consent — that he is borne through the transit 
of Ufe by the laws of necessity, and that his exit from time to 



18 PREFACE. 

eternity is determined and fixed by the indissoluble chain of 
causality. That life, itself, is a forced state, and would die out 
as quickly without the vital air and the food that develope and 
nourish it as would the flame without the fuel which sustains it. 
That thought, in like manner, has no independent substantial 
existence. It is an effect — a result. It is conditional — it is the 
product of a subjective and objective unity. It, like life, has 
no intrinsic, real or prior existence, but is a new creation, and 
in turn is possessed of creative powers. For instance, powder 
has an existence, and the spark, also, but explosion has none — 
it is a new creation, a result, a product of the union of both. 
But, when thus begot, becomes a real, yet momentary entity — 
a power and a cause of other results. In like manner, the child 
is not a real entity, has no separate or independent existence, 
but is an effect, a product, the result of the union of father and 
mother, or a subject and an object. Just so it is with life and 
all organic existences. The grain of wheat that has been en- 
veloped with the mummies of Egypt for three thousand years, 
and from which whole fields of wheat have sprung, would re- 
main through all times without the stimulus of light, heat, soil 
and moistm'e that forces it into existence, and developes its in- 
trinsic and inherent nature. In the acorn there are no limbs, 
leaves, roots or bark to be seen, nor is there any chicken to 
be seen in the egg, but by incubation, the magic power of na- 
ture is made manifest. Just so it is with the mind which would 
remain forever without ideas, unless it came in contact with 
objects to beget and develope those ideas. 

All the faculties of the mind, so called, will be tested in 
turn, and it will be shown that this parade about external and 
internal powers of mind, and that the enumeration of faculties, 
as sensation, perception, consciousness, conception, memory, 
imagination, reason, judgment, attention, taste, and the moral 
faculty, are but lying sounds without an archetype, and dis- 
tinctions without a difference, calculated only to confuse and 
mislead the pupil. These are delusive and contradictory terms, 



PREFACE. 19 

when carried out in their application. We might with equal 
propriety add the faculties of hunger, thirst, cold, hatred, love ; 
of fiddling and of dancing, and of all our endless thoughts, pas- 
sions and emotions. At every turn of the mind, like that of 
the Kaleidescope, there is a new form that might have a new 
name for countless millions of times. The mind like the wax, is 
a simple substratum that may be shaped to many forms and 
stamped with endless impressions. Sensation, alone, constitutes 
that substratum upon which the whole superstructure of mind 
is founded. Feeling, alone, gives us a knowledge of all impres- 
sions — of every thing that we can by any possibility be made 
acquainted with. Now, from sensation arise pleasure and pain, 
and next follow desire and aversion. This constitutes the whole 
-^foundation and sum total of the human mind. God has im- 
planted in mankind universally, a desire for happiness, and an 
aversion to misery. This is steady, uniform and innate — it is 
in all persons and in all ages — and it is the first law of our na- 
ture and assented to by all— it is a law of our constitution, and 
consequently intuitive and fatal. God has so inseparably 
united virtue and happiness, that it becomes our interest to 
sustain moral rule — our own property, life and liberty depend- 
ing upon it. Mill says, in his logic page 13-34 : "A feeling 
and a state of consciousness are equivalent expressions : every- 
thing is a feeling of which the mind is conscious. Every thing 
which it reels, or in other words, which forms a part of its own 
sentient existence." For this httle fragment of divine truth 
which he has dared to express in regard to mind, he has been 
much abused. Though this single sentence is worth all his 
book besides, though the best work on logic ever published, 
it has suffered the censure of theology for reducing the mind and 
the divine consciousness to a mere feeling — a thing which the 
uneducated and even the brutes possess. Mill's fault is in 
bringing truth and philosophy to the light — stript of its mystic 
garb, and making it so simple and plain, that the common lay- 
men see and understand it. Yulgar and degraded as sensation 



20 PREFACE. 

may be, as represented by mystic and humbug writers, it will ap- 
pear to the reader, before he is through with this little volume, 
that without sensation or feeling, we could not be conscious of 
a single idea, or even of our own existence. Feeling or sensi- 
bility, in short, is the distinguishing, characteristic and high 
boast of the soul, as rendering it susceptible of pleasure and 
pain, and consequently the subject of rewards and punishments. 
It must be granted by every close and unbiased observer, that 
we cannot be conscious of a thing without feeling it, nor feel 
'and know a thing without being conscious of it. It must then 
be as Mill says, that feeling is the soul, and the substratum, and 
sum total of mind ; yes, and the identical thing called divine 
conscience, without which we could neither feel, nor know any- 
thing, and why theology should so traiterously misrepresent 
the simple laws of God, I cannot conceive, except it is to mis- 
lead mankind in a knowledge of their own nature, and thus 
perpetuate the necessity of learned imposters. It seems to me 
impossible that any set of authors should be so stupid as to fill 
their books, in good faith, with such gabble and gibberish as 
they have done, and I, therefore, surmise that it is more fi'om 
design than ignorance. 

Holding as I do, that truth is the word and work of God 
himself, in whatever department of his government it may be 
found, I shall boldly pursue it with sacred fidelity, lead me 
where it may ; regardless of vulgar hue and cry, and the bil- 
lings-gate ribaldry that may be poured upon me, by the foul and 
fallible mouth of that nut-shell, petty and party divinity, which 
has ever been the bane of religion, and the clamorous and cling- 
ing cure of science. In my condemnation of superstition, man- 
worship, and all other conventional and artistic innovations upon 
the pure and rational worship of God, it may be supposed, by 
the craven devotees to human authority, that I am opposed to 
religion itself, in which case, no inference could be more false ; 
my efforts throughout, being to strengthen and confirm the 
sacred bonds of reason and religion : not the religion of tho 



PREFACE. 21 

Pope, nor of Luther — not of Calvinism, Armenianism, Maho- 
metanism, or of Mormonism ; but the religion of God, the 
creator and governor, not of a little sect, but of the vast universe, 
wherein his son, our Savior Jesus Christ, shall be my preceptor 
and exemplar. I shall not teach the god of a dark corner, nor 
intriguer with any petty party — not a blind, mutable, partial 
and passionate God, who does things one hour and regrets and 
frets at his own acts the next, but a God of wisdom, power, 
love and mercy. Believing as I do, that there are great and 
grievous errors in all the schisms, isms and dogmatisms of man, 
which are detestable in the eyes of God, I feel it my religious 
duty to show the irrationality and enormity of such fatal folly. 
In exposing the superstition and mummeries of men, I shall 
expect the condemnation of fanaticism and blind prejudice ; but 
God whose supremacy, I have maintained throughout, will give 
me the reward of his smiling approbation. Believing that re- 
ligion can be sustained by reason, I shall strive to show the 
absurdity of basing it upon mysteries ; and, in supposing that 
uninspired men can by any course of natural education, know 
any more of those mysteries than the common ploughman. 
The very name of mystery carries with it the impossibility of 
human explanation ; and why, then, give such degrading cre- 
dence to the vanity of our earthly imposters, who profess to 
explain that which in its very nature is incomprehensible. I 
know that all who may dare the sacredness of long-established 
customs, must suffer popular censure, and I can now see So- 
crates swallowing the poison, because he could not believe in 
the corrupt religion of his day, and Galileo upon his knees be- 
fore an ignorant and ungodly priesthood. I also can see the 
mighty array of holy orders, and the thunder bolts of the 
Vatican hurled at Martin Luther, who was anathematized and 
pronounced by sacred custom, too base for dogs to eat with. 
John Wesley too, in common with all others, who have labored 
for the freedom of thought and the improvement of religion, 
have in like manner been rewarded by the malevolence and 



22 PREFACE. 

calumny of the church. The proper use of religion I hold to 
be essential to the good order and happiness of society ; while 
in the abuse of it, we have witnessed the most horrid scenes of 
wickedness and inhumanity. The greatest blessings on earth, 
we know, may be perverted to the most powerful engines of 
destruction. The incendiary who, by fire burns whole cities, 
and the Demon who, by the Bible, broils his brother alive, 
should in common receive the condemnation and wrathful 
detestation of all mankind. He who opposes the proper use 
of religion, opposes the known will of God, as evinced in his 
own constitution, for he has so interwoven religion into our 
very nature that every creature on earth possesses it. Search 
throughout the darkest ages and amongst the rudest nations of 
earth, and it is there. In light and in shade it is seen and felt, 
and fret it as you may, you cannot wear it out. Can I then, 
with the conviction of these facts, as firmly fixed upon my soul, 
as that of my own existence, impiously reject religion as an 
imposter. Some kind of religion mankind always had and ever 
will have, and being well assured, (speaking even as a heathen,) 
that ours is better suited to the constitution and wants of man, 
than any other, I thank my God for opening my eyes to its 
boundless reign and its endless blessings. Man left in this 
world of sorrows without that spark of light, is doomed to 
darkness, misery, and hopeless despau'. He is born with the 
seeds of destruction within him, and every step he takes in the 
chase of pleasure, pain steps close upon his heels, and in a 
speedy exit from all that is near and dear on earth, there is no 
escape. The loathsome and yawning grave is ever open before 
him, into which, without the hope of immortality, he sinks down 
to that dark and dread abyss of eternal oblivion. Religion, on 
the contrary throws a bright and heavenly halo around the 
soul that lights up the dark chambers of the grave, and guilds 
the empire of death itself. When the monster death is dealing 
his last fell strokes, we can in rapturous joy cry ont with the 
sainted Paul — '' death, where is thy sting, grave, thy vie- 



PREFACE. 23 

tories !" Soon shall mj disembodied soul ascend from the dark 
and dread abodes of dissolution to those bright realms of eternal 
bliss, where sickness and sorrow, and parting will be no more, 
for ever and for ever ; and where our dearly loved and long 
lost children, kindred and friends will see and know us face to 
face. Here, amidst perennial sweets and the undying love of 
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, will we endure in happy 
bonds through ceaseless time. 

" Lost in earth, in air or main, 
Kindred atoms meet again." 

A glorious resurrection. 

Thus, as life speeds on, the confiding soul can look with calm 
indifference upon the approach of death, as but a change of 
form, aud a glorious transit to endless joys. Life at best is but 
a dream — it is like the morning dew and the early flower, soon 
gone from earth forever. It is but a shadow, a flitting sun- 
beam, a bubble upon the stream of time, that rises and sinks 
like nations, in endless succession. This earth is not our home, 
we look to a higher dwelling, " a house not made for hands, 
eternal in the heavens,^' To the poor heart-broken, friendless, 
and cast down, religion is the only stay. In the midst of misery 
and hopeless despair, it comes as a husband to the widow, and 
a father to the fatherless. It is eyes to the blind and feet to 
the lame. It is wealth, endless wealth, undying wealth to the 
poor ; yes, a wealth and honor far beyond what all the empty 
honors that a sordid strife and a vassalage of sin in this world 
can bestow. The glare and pomp of this life, is but like the 
thwarting meteor that catches the vulgar gaze, and sinks upon 
the welkin's bound ; while the Christians' faith must endure 
forever. The melting and transporting influence of holy love, 
gives a more sincere and lasting joy than all that man and earth 
besides can bequeath. Amidst the perils of life, surrounding 
gloom and the pall of death, religion is our buoyant guide and 
safe protector. Yes, when that inexorable death seizes upon 
the fluttering heart and all earthy prospects fade from the 



24 PREFACE. 

filmed eye and the curtain of eternal night falls upon us, no 
spark of hope for the immortal soul is left but in the mercy of 
that kind father who made us and calls us to our everlasting 
home. The Christian's hope is for a better and a happier home, 
beyond the confines of time, where his crown of glory is to far 
exceed all earthly crowns, and even here, while breathing his 
fervent prayers and praise to God, he enjoys a more sacred in- 
dependence and tranquil delight than potentates can feel upon 
their tottering thrones. God cannot then have left it to the 
petty efforts of man to quibble away this holy principle — the 
hope of immortality beyond the grave, that beats high in the 
breast of every creature on earth ; and shall it be that I have 
in any wise sacrilegiously robbed the Christian of one particle 
of his faith ; thou, Father, the fountain of love and mercy, 
who best knowest my heart, will pity and forgive. 

I had thought to be done with my preface, but knowing the 
influence which human authority has over the common reader, 
I deem it well to make a short quotation from Sir William 
Hamilton, certainly the most learned and pious writer of the 
age, who, in his condemnation of the clergy for mystifying the 
plain and unmistaken word of God, by their "learned ignorance," 
as he calls it, writes as follows. In speaking of the vanity and 
false teachings of theology, he says : " Humility thus becomes 
the cardinal virtue, not only of revelation, but of reason. This 
scheme, (that requires no mystic learning) proves moreover 
that no difficulty emerges in theology, which had not previously 
emerged in philosophy : that in fact, if the divine did not 
transcend what it has pleased the deity to reveal, and wilfully 
identify the doctrine of God^s word with some arrogant extreme 
of human speculation, philosophy would be found the most 
useful auxihary of theology. For a word of false, and pestilent, 
and presumptuous reasoning, by which philosophy and theology 
are now equally discredited, would be at once abolished, in the 
recognition of this rule of prudent nescience, nor could it longer 



PREFACE. 



25 



be too justly said of the code of consciousness, as by reformed 
Divines it has been acknowledged of the Bible : 

" This is tlie book, where each his dogma seeks ; 
And this the book, where each his dogma finds." 

Specially, in its doctrine of causality, this philosophy fof 
simple humility) brings us back from the aberrations of modern 
theology, to the truth and simplicity of the more ancient church. 
It is thus shown, by this great author, to be both irrational 
and uTeligious, to theorize the Bible, and sacrilegiously draw 
from the simplicity and unity of God's word, the many dog- 
matic contradictory and destructing creeds, that have brought, 
as he says, both philosophy and theology into doubt and dis- 
respect. St. Chrysostom says that humility is the foundation 
of knowledge, and it is certainly opposed to that vain and 
"false knowledge that puffieth up," and which scripture 
forbids. It is this superstitious and arrogant dogmatism of 
mystic and controversal theology, that I hold in contempt 
and will oppose throughout, as not only false in fact, but 
libellous to God, and dangerous to the well-being and happiness 
of society. This vain attempt of Divines to reach the infinite 
by their uninspired and finite mind, is a gross and criminal 
violation of what scripture forbids — the attempt to explain the 
"secret things of God, past 'finding out." Believing as I do, 
that the simple teachings of Christ and his pure example is all 
we want, I have enlisted in the service of God, and will fight 
to my last breath against the learned ignorance and the 
sacrilegious vanity of man. 

I had not intended, at first, to publish any thing more than 
my article upon volition, but finding truth so simple and easy, 
I soon ran through with that article, and have had time to 
add several essays on other subjects. My solemn meditations 
upon the past and present condition, and the future prospects 
of man, will, I hope, arrest the attention of the reader, and 
cause him to reflect upon who and what he is, and whence he 



26 PREFACE. 

came, and whether he is bound. Mv whole life being spent in 
active and out-door exertions, I have neither known nor at- 
tempted any thing of the artistic rules of book-raaking, but 
have simply followed my natural rejQections as they arose from 
time to time, mostly in the open fields, the wild forests, and upon 
the great high-ways of toiling life. The subjects upon which I 
write being so nearly allied, there will doubtless be found some 
repetition, owing to those reflections being made at distant inter- 
vals, and under no continuous and studied system, for but 
recently, when writing upon a certain subject, I found eighty 
pages already written and laid away, which I had entirely for- 
gotten, showing that the same trains of thought may occur 
upon the same and similar subjects, though treated of under 
different heads. 

From the great irritability of my visual organs, I have not 
for many years been able to read or look upon paper for any 
length of time, without both cerebral and gastric distress, la 
consequence of which I have neither reviewed nor corrected a 
single line, after first recording my thoughts. It is not im- 
probable, therefore, that I may have somewhat duplicated, 
particularly as I wrote in detached numbers, just as time ad- 
mitted and circumstances prompted me. This matters not 
however, as the arguments and great principles involved in the 
subjects treated of, are not thereby invalidated, or in any wise 
less interesting. If, however, these dislocated reflections upon 
spiritual subjects, brought forward under the most urgent, 
incessent secular and common-place pursuits of life, shall find 
favor with the thinking and discreminating community, I will 
revise my thoughts, curtail and correct my eratic style, add 
much that is valuable and invulnerable to all cavil, and thus 
make a book in good earnest, not for the present age of 
beings, who look to men for their religion, but for posterity, 
for wliom I mostly labor ; for it is as sure as that there is a 
God in Heaven, that superstition and idolatry will pass like our 
mystic and idle dreams, when the minds of men will be left 



PREFACE. 21 

free to read and appreciate the truth, that we have a common 
father — a great and a good God, a God of honor, truth and 
justice, who will not want only maltreat his children or punish 
them without a fault, and who holds the simple-hearted and 
faithful devotion of the uneducated, in higher esteem than all 
the dead symbols and offensive dogmas of vain and arrogant 
learning. The time, I say, is coming, when men of higher 
thoughts and nobler feelings, will look back with as much con- 
tempt upon the hypotheses of the schools and the formulas of 
sects, as we now do upon the refined and sophistic schemes of 
wily leaders who have deluded, degraded and enslaved man- 
kind in ages past. Yes, as sure as the fatal march of time, 
will the minds of men be lifted on high to see the resplendent 
glory and eternal majesty of God, when their grovelling faith 
will be lost in these poor erring demi-gods, such as Confucius, 
Zoroaster, Mahomet and the Pope, with the more meagre "and 
numerous train of little Pseudo gods, as Calvin, A^rminius, 
Swedenborg, Campbell, Joe Smith, the divine inventor of 
religion, and the great Brigham Young of world wide fame, 
and lastly. Mother Ann Lee, the mother of the motherless and 
the founder of the faithful inhuman annihilation. Yes, I 
affirm that all faith in the vasselating opinions of such petty 
and ephemeral beings will vanish before the mighty, immutable 
and eternal works of God and the light of science, as does the 
ghosts of night and the mists of morn before the rising sun. 
Yes, and then, and not till then, will all eyes, to the uttermost 
bounds of earth, be turned to the one great God, and to 
Christ, the simple child of nature, as the archetype of perfec- 
tion and their only guide to happiness here and hereafter. 

Fearing that my calvinistic friends, of whom I have many, 
,both in and out of my own family, near and dear to my heart, 
may think that I have, in my general melee against the errors 
of education and the abuses of religion, in the human family, 
aimed my blow more directly at them than at any of the other 
ten thousand deluded and idolatrous parties ; I will say that 



28 PREFACE. 

nature and common sense has, in spite of their religion, made 
them just as good as other people, and that my aim is not at 
them particularly, but against all who sacrilegiously tamper 
with the simple and sacred word of God, and impiously adapt 
it to their own selfish and sectarian purposes ; thus begetting 
a bitter feeling of bigotry and intolerance amongst the people 
of God, even to the destruction of each other. Believing as I 
do, that there is a God, that he is a just and impartial God, 
and that we are all his children, who he loves more dearly 
than an earthly parent does his children ; I cannot believe 
that he ever unconditionally created one portion for happiness, 
and the other for eternal damnation ; and I have, therefore, with 
the full conviction of those impious slanders and awful imputations 
against the great Jehovah, solemnly and boldly, but respect- 
fully condemned all such contracted uncharitable and irreverent 
interpretations. As God has caused the sun to shine and the 
showers to fall, for the benefit of every creature on earth, it 
cannot be. that he has withheld the blessings of religion, parti- 
cularly as he has commanded it to be preached to all nations, 
in view of which facts, we cannot too openly detest those false 
and presumptuous leaders of deluded parties for their attempt- 
ing to monopolize those bounteous gifts of heaven. We know 
that a sophistic and quibbling clergy can, by false assumptions 
and the dexterous use of ambiguous terms, coupled with Jeho- 
vah's high authority, call to their altar the craven and the 
credulous, but they can never shake the confidence of those who 
have communed with God in his sacred fanes of the silent forest, 
or learned his character from the book of nature. Nor has the 
mazes of superstition and the delusions of false theology any 
charm for the man who has read the Bible for himself, and 
learned from the simple precepts, and the pure and unostenta-^ 
tious life of Christ, what constitutes true piety and unalloyed 
religion. The study of theology and long training in the rules 
of logic may enable a man to make a pedantic display before 
his gaping congregation, who listen with wonder at his compli' 



PREFACE. 29 

cated divisions, and are lost in the involutions of his subtle 
refinings ; but such vanity and folly can never better the heart 
nor satisfy the sincere and pious soul. As the distinguished 
Butler says, when speaking of such Divines : 

" For they a rope of sand can twist, 
As firm as learned Sorbonist.'^ 

Having reference to the celebrated theological school at Paris, 
where, at the expense of religion. Satin had established an 
institution in which the word of God was taught to be twisted 
to suit the secular and sordid purposes of men. 

It is such institutions as the above, always secretly got up 
and headed by Satin, that I aim to expose, for they are cer- 
tainly stumbling blocks and bones of contention in the church 
of God, where there should be found but one faith, one people 
and one church. That all theological institutions are equally 
corrupt, is not here maintained, but that all tend to evil, by the 
corruption of our morals and the destruction of our religion, is 
as true as that, wars, bitter and satanic passions, with an 
intolerant spirit of revenge, even to the burning of each other, 
constitute an evil. One portion of those schools, where they 
harness their pupils to the doctrines of the church, and drudge 
and drill them in the presumptuous dogmas and fruitless in- 
signias of the opinionated and vain men, are carried on through 
honest delusion and ignorant and superstitious learning, while 
the other is sustained purely by chicanery and trick. The 
gargon of separate religions, as taught in these institutions, 
founded upon the simple and harmonious unite Christ, is a gross 
solecism, which conveys to the mind of every sound and im- 
partial thinker a glaring inconsistency. 

My whole object in writing is to introduce reason not only 
as the corrective of the incongruous theological teachings of the 
day, but as the only means of reconciling the inconsistencies of 
the Old Testament, and the thieving temper and murderous 
acts of the Jews, under the name and by the pretended au- 
thority, of a truthful, just and feeling God. When we read 



30 PREFACE. 

such inconsistencies as the following, what refuge is there, from 
deism, yes, atheism, but in reason, for no one of sound mind 
and correct heart could believe in such a ,God as the Jews 
moulded to their own base purposes, and at last rejected and 
murdered. The reader will please reflect upon the following 
palpable contradictions, recorded, no doubt, to suit the feelings 
and views of the individuals, for they cannot be the words of 
the great and unerring God of the universe, who is full of truth, 
of mercy and justice, and will not lie, steal or murder, as did 
the God of the Jews, according to their own records. 

" And Jehovah spoke unto Moses face to face, as a man 
speakest unto his friend." Exod. xxxiii — 9, 11. "For they 
have heard that thou, Jehovah, art amongst this people, that 
thou, Jehovah, art seen face to face." Numbers xiv. Now it 
is known without long quotations, that in other places, it is 
recorded that no man hath seen God, or can behold him and 
Hve, etc., etc. It is moreover said that the Lord put Moses in 
the clift of a rock and hid him with his hand, while he passed 
by, " and I will take away my hand, saith the Lord, and thou 
shalt see my back parts ; but my face shall not be seen." 
" And Moses returned to the Lord, and said : ' Lord, where- 
fore hast thou so evil entreated this people ? Why is it that 
thou hast sent me ? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak iu 
thy name, he hath done evil to this people ; neither hast thou 
delivered thy people at all.' " Pretty plain talk — but hear the 
reply. "And Jehovah said unto Moses: 'I have seen this 
people, and behold it is a stiff-necked people. Now, therefore, 
let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, that I 
may consume them.' '^ " And Moses besought Jehovah his God, 
and said : ' Lord, why doeth thy wrath wax hot against thy 
people which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt, 
with great power and a mighty hand. Wherefore, should 
the Egyptians speak and say, for mischief did he bring them 
out to slay them in the mountains, and consume them from the 
face of the earth ? Turn from thy fiery wrath, and repent of 



PREFACE. 31 

this evil against thy people. — And the Lord repented of the 
evil which he thought to do unto his people." He seems, 
however, not to haye changed his mind and repented, till 
Moses rebuked and reminded him of what he had forgotten : 
" Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thy servants, to 
whom thou swearest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, 
I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this 
land that I have- spoken of I will give unto your seed, and they 
shall inherit it forever. And the Lord repented of the evil 
which he thought to do unto his people." Now, after this 
solemn oath and the rebuke of Moses, have the Jews multi- 
plied like the stars of heaven, or have they dwindled by civil 
wars till scattered to the four quarters of the globe ; and 
have they inherited the promised land forever, or are they 
strangers to it ? Again, the immutable God of heaven never 
forget his pledges or repents of his acts. — " For the word of 
the Lord is right and all his works are done in truth. He 
loveth righteousness and judgment " I know that whatsoever 
God doeth, it shall be forever ; nothing can be put to it, nor 
any thing taken from it. The strength of Israel will not lie, 
nor repent ; for he is not a man that he should repent." 
Yet, in other parts, as we have seen, he is made to repent. 
And again — " And Jehovah said : ' Who shall persuade 
Ahah that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead ? And 
one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. 
And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, 
and said I will persuade him. And Jehovah said unto him, 
wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a 
lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, 
thou shalt persuade him and prevail also : go forth and do 
so.'" It is again said, in other parts, that God will not lie or 
deceive, for — "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord; 
but they that deal truly are his delight." " And Noah built 
an altar unto the Lord, and ojffered burnt offerings on the altar. 
And the Lord smelled a sweet savour ; and the Lord said in 



da PREFACE. , 

his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for 
man's sake." As though the smell of cookery should alter or 
determine the eternal purposes of Almighty God, the maker 
of the universe. — '' But ye shall offer the burnt offering for a 
sweet savour unto the Lord." " And ye shall offer a burnt 
offering, a sacrifice made by fire of a sweet savour unto the 
Lord, thirteen bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the 
first year." Now comes the contradiction of all this culinary 
tricking, by the pretended order of the Lord, for the benefit 
of the luxurious priests, for it will soon appear that the Lord 
did not himself need it. " I will take no bullock out of thy 
house, nor he-goats out of thy folds ; for every beast of the 
forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. If I 
were hungry, I would not tell thee ; for the world is mine, and 
the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the 
blood of goats. Offer unto God thanksgiving. Psalm 50 : 
9 — 14. "For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give 
it : thou delightest not in burnt offerings. Psalm 51 : 16. 
"To what is the. multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith 
the Lord. I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the 
fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or 
of lambs or of he-goats." Isaiah, 1 : 11. — "Wherewith shall 
I come before Jehovah and bow myself before the high God ? 
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of 
a year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of 
rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil ? Shall I give my 
first born for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the 
sin of my soul ? He hath showed thee, man, what is good ; 
and what doeth Jehovah require of thee but to do justly, to 
love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.' Micah, 6 : 
6 — 8. " And the Lord said unto Moses, speak now in the 
ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, 
and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels 
of gold. And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight 
of the Egyptians. And the children of Israel did accordingly 



PREFACE. 33 

to the word of Moses ; and they borrowed of the Egyptians 
jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment. And Jehovah 
gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that 
they lent unto them ; and they spoiled the Egyptians." Ex. 
iii., 21, etc. Here again, God is made the author of great 
deception and base ingratitude ; to borrow, and not return is 
ingratitude, and when we gain a favor by deception, intending 
to abscond with it, it is theft. 

Now the above apparent inconsistencies in the character 
of God (and there are others too numerous to name) can only 
be reconciled by that " poor human reason" so much abused. 
The promises of God to the Jews which have never been ful- 
filled, were conditional. They were covenants, all of which 
the Jews on their part violated. But we are wasting time 
upon these colateral points, and I will close my preface by 
insisting that God is in earnest when he rejects all forms and 
sacrifices, and declares that all he asks is to "do justice, love, 
mercy, and walk humbly before him." 

All the children of God should stand upon one platform, 
as firm and immovable as the foundations of the earth, 
agreeing that he is wise, powerful and just, and under this 
granted position, farther agree that reason shall be the test of 
disputation and our only guide to truth. Thus, when it is 
said that God is an impotent and short-sighted botch, who does 
and undoes, who resolves and repents, who waxes hot, fiery 
and revengeful towards his children and plunges them into 
eternal hell-fire, without a crime or provocation ; reason tells 
us that it is untrue, it matters not by whom said, or from 
what authority it may come. And when it is recorded of 
God, who made and owns the universe, that he has been 
guilty of the lowest deception to obtain jewels and petty 
bawbles, by putting lies in the mouths of the unbelieving, 
thieving and blood thirsty Jews, to swindle the more generous 
and kind hearted Egyptians ; reason tells us that it is false. 
And again, when it is known that " lying lips are an abomina- 

2 * 



34 PREFACE. 

tion to the Lord," the idea of Jehovah putting a lying spirit 
into the mouths of false prophets for the basest of purposes, 
becomes as abhorrent to reason, as it is abominable to the 
Lord. It is moreover threatened to a vain woman, that God 
would hoist her coats and expose her secrets, which would 
be such low stooping for a God, that reason says it is not the 
word of God, but the word of a man, of gross and vulgar 
thought. Seeing these then, and many other passages, evinc- 
ing both the language and thoughts of men, why is it that 
the inspirational and canonical infalUbility of every thought 
and word in the Bible, should be so streneously contended 
for, but for the want of reason. This " poor human reason," so 
scoffed at by Divines as incompetent to the mystery of things 
unseen, is the very bully so swaggeringly brought up by them- 
selves to brow beat their antagonal creed-makers in points of 
disputation — with the catholics for instance, who contend for 
a literal construction in the eucharist, where Christ said of the 
bread, " take, eat, this is my body," and of the wine, " this is 
my blood." The protestant says, this, taken literally, is false, 
and exultingly taunts the catholic with reason and common 
sense. For, say they, every boy ten years old, by the use of 
reason, knows that there is not meat in bread nor blood in 
wine, and thus it is that they can call reason to their aid, 
when it serves their sectarian purposes, and yet cry out 
infidel to those who are governed by reason. In short, for I 
must close, the only way to do justice to God and good to 
man, is to descriminate between what is of God and what of 
man, which can only be done by reason : God's sacred gift 
and guide to man. Those uninspired and obvious discrepan- 
cies introduced into the Bible, it matters not whether by 
ignorance or design, are clinging curses upon the pure, simple 
and sublime word of God, and grossly offensive to an elevated, 
chaste and sensitive soul, that entertains a God far above the 
petty ribaldry and foul frivolities of man. My object and 
only object in writing, is to rid our faith of those stumbling 



PREFACE. ' 35 

blocks and clogs to the church, and introduce in their place, 
the Supreme Lord of heaven and earth, the pure fountain of 
life, of love and mercy. I think it black and revolting ingra- 
titude, to cast aside the Sublime God of nature and the author 
of our being, and preach as a scar crow to the people, the* 
supremacy of fiery, vindictive 'and malicious Gods ; and parti- 
cularly, when the great God of heaven has said — " Thou shalt 
not have no other Gods before me ;" admitting that there 
were other Gods in the minds of men, who by the by, have in 
these latter days been preached up, both to the terror and 
the hatred of the people. If the clergy can be brought to 
preach a one supreme and universal God and kind, impartial 
and patient father, who esteems the sincere soul and feeling 
heart more than the pompous and learned pretentions of 
those blind and ludicrous expounders of things beyond their 
reach, God will be loved, and the millenium commenced. Yes, 
when they will preach that we are to become as little children, 
by a heart of unfeigned sincerity and of simple and unalloyed 
devotion, then will the spirit of God, and not of fashion attend 
their preaching, and sweep from the churches, as with the 
bosom of distraction, all that hollow-hearted pomp, pride and 
parade of our modern church paraphernalia. Yes, I most sin- 
eerily and solemnly affirm, under the promptings of sacred truth, 
that if morality, honest dealing and charity were preached to 
the people as more acceptable to God than faith in creeds, 
church formalities, and pay to the preacher, that we should 
have a much more honest community, and that the news 
columns would have something better to publish, than that we 
are a mass of murderers and swindlers. In confirmation of this 
opinion, let us hear what the unmistaken words of inspu-ation 
says, in regard to what constitutes religion. " Though I speak 
with the tongues of man and of angels, and have not charity, I 
am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though 
I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all 
knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could re- 



36 PREFACE. 

move mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And 
though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I 
give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me 
nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind ; charity envieth not, 
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up (like our modern 
creed-makers), doeth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in 
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." Thus, after going on 
farther to say that all prophecies, knowledge and tongues, may 
fail and vanish away, but that charity, which is immutable and 
eternal, must abide for ever. The Apostle closes his remarks 
upon this subject, in the following words : " And now, abideth, 
faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is 
charity." Now in modern times, we have reversed the thing, 
by believing that faith in creeds, church-membership and a 
fashionable resort to church constitutes religion. There is no 
repenting in sack-cloth and ashes seen, but a self-sufiBciency, 
with fine broad cloth and costly linen, has been substituted in 
its place. Faith and fashion have actually driven charity and 
good works from the prcceints of the church. The crime is 
now the want of creed ; for a man may abound in charity and 
good works, and yet except, He attaches himself to some one of 
the discrepant and waring creeds, he is counted out as a har- 
dened sinner. In the days of Paul, and under the instruction 
and practice of Christ, charity and piety was every thing ; but 
amongst our sovereign interpreters and creed-makers, Christ 
and his teachings are forgotten, and charity is hooted at as a 
thing that may be exercised as well out of the church as in it. 
In truth, charity is no longer known in the church : for where 
was the charity of John Calvin or any of his party, when his 
creed of eternal destiny was introduced ? Was there charity 
enough then left, I ask, to save the learned and pious Servetus 
from the torturing flames ? Where, where, I ask again, was 
that charity which burnt a pious and godly man for the con- 
scientious exercise of his own opinion. And now let me say to 



PREFACE. 



37 



the reader who has any knowledge of the selfish and party- 
passions of man, that but for the conservative power of scepti- 
cism and chm'ch divisions the horrid and heart sickening scenes 
of Smithfield and Bartholomew would be enacted over and over 
again. Yes, the fiendish fires of human sacrifices would be 
kindled, and the bloody sword, clotted with human gore, would 
again be unsheathed. And though there cannot now be a 
sufficient concentration of power in any one of the waring sects 
to carry on those vengeful acts of inhumanity, there rankles in 
the heart a secret enmity that lacks but numbers to make itself 
known, and let preachers drum as much as they may about the 
necessity of their creed faith and church-membership ; I con- 
front them with sacred truth, in saying, that whenever such 
faith enters the church, charity flies out at the windows ; and 
that charity, which, by the positive declaration of God is para- 
mount to everything else, (for though we had faith to move 
mountains, and were to give our bodies to be burnt, without it 
we are nothing,) does not attend such preaching. Where now, 
is that charity which suffereth long and is kind, that envieth 
not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up and behaves not 
unseenly, that thinketh no evil, and is not easily provoked? 
It is gone from our modern churches, and a theology of faith 
in the dogmatisms of creeds and church-formalities, with an 
uncharitable intolerance and a puffed pride of party that be- 
haveth itself most unseemly with its neighbors, have taken its 
place. 

If faith be a merit, the devil surely has it, for he believes 
and trembles, and doubtless would make a very good routine 
member ; yes, and albeit, attends in the person of many an 
arrogant and fashionable a confessor. Enter a modern fashion- 
able church- and what — why the pugnacious creed-maker and 
logical defender is there — the latest style of fine bonnets, and 
the hoops and hip-strops are there — the empty forms and artistic 
taste of cold criticism is there, and the eyes that wonder to the 
ends of the world, are everywhere, while charity, lovely charity, 



38 PREFACE. 

divine and modest charity which vaunteth not and is not puffed 
up, is nowhere. 

These are facts, solemn facts, facts worthy of the serious consi- 
deration of the moralist and well wisher of human harmony and 
happiness. And now, in view of all these facts, why should a 
man be censured for not swearing allegiance to any one creed, 
when, in so doing, he would violate his own conscience in giving 
up the simple precepts of Christ for the presumptuous creeds of 
men. But few have ever reflected that there is no difference 
between a sovereign law-giver, and a sovereign interpreter of 
that law ; and in fact, the interpreter is paramount to the law- 
itself. For instance, we have the law of God, but men, dissa- 
tisfied with the simplicity of a law which every man can read 
and understand for himself, and ambitious for party power and 
worldly fame, get up creeds to lead some this way and some that 
way, till the mem-bers of Christ are dislocated and torn asunder ; 
man, the interpreter, certainly, has more power than God, the law- 
giver, the God of heaven having thus had his unity destroyed 
and his flock led distractedly astray. Were it possible for an 
intelligent Bible reader of conscientious piety, to subscribe to 
all the articles of any one faith, he could not be bettered 
thereby, and would most certainly lose his confidence in 
Christ, and his charity for his brethren of other denominations, 
which facts are amply proven by all history, both sacred and 
profane ; for why otherwise the bloody wars and -fiery trials of 
the various sects. These are grave and momentous verities 
that keep the best and most moral of men from associating 
themselves with any of the distracted and self-named parties, 
preferring to bear with the arrogant and unseemly tauntings of 
bigotry, rather than to desert the simple and unostentatious 
teachings and pure examples of Christ. We know that popular 
favor and secular gain may be obtained by a church going 
membership, but it can never better the heart or serve us before 
the bar of heaven, where the searcher of all hearts will be 



PREFACE. 39 

present, and is not to be blinded by tlie artistic forms and pre- 
tentious displays of this world. 

Thus have I given my views to the clergy and to the public 
upon one of the most important subjects that can possibly 
engage the investigation of man, and should they not return to 
me their gratititle, I will not be disappointed, in as much as I 
too well know the vanity of the world, to expect much for my 
correction of it. I have given a few quotations from the Bible, 
in proof of my position, and might have given many more, 
were I better versed in its pages, but having read this holy 
book purely for its precepts and principles, and not for quibble 
or quarrel with my neighbor, I have memorized but little of 
it, I will here very properly object to the common remark, 
that one who is not versed in the Bible has no right to talk 
about it, for it is quite certain that the humble and uneducated 
ploughman may gain more from the legitimate object of the 
Bible than the learned Divine, with all his controversal knowl- 
edge. If biblical learning constitutes any part of piety or 
religion, then the ox-trained clergy, and particularly the 
Jesuitic Bible devourers, have greatly more piety than the 
common reader, and the devil who was an angel, is doubtless 
well versed in Scripture. This though, having a mystic charm 
with the weak and credulous, I do not grant, nor do I believe, 
that the deeply learned and great Divines of Europe, who tire 
their journeymen to do the drudgery of preaching, while they 
luxuriously remain at home to drink wine and crack jokes 
with their titled friends, are a whit better than our little 
popinjays and pretenders, as they call them of this country. 
And though, according to the principle, so much harped upon, 
that scriptural learning is a virtue, and though the erudite and 
well fed clergy of England, may look with contempt upon our 
embrowned and meager Httle circuit riders, before whose 
hungry coming the chickens fly with instinctive terror, they 
are, in the eyes of God no better. In fine, if divine learning 
makes a man the better, then are the clergy, who I have seen 



40 PREFACE. 

crowd the bull-baitings, the cockpits and the gambling tables, 
greatly better than the humble Christian, who only knows the 
precepts and aims to follow the examples of Christ. The 
lawyer, whose profession it is to know the law, is no better 
man than he who is ignorant of that law. Be assured, my 
reader, for I must close, that even " the gentiles, which have 
not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, 
these having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which 
show the work of the law written in their hearts, their con- 
science bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile 
accusing, or else excusing one another." All experience shows 
that the Apostle, in the above quoted words, was correct ; for 
God, our kind and eternal father, foresaw that all his children 
could not be learned, and consequently printed upon their 
hearts his law, and fixed upon their consciences the right 
thereof, if not misled by creed-makers. One word more, in 
regard to the efficacy of preaching, which is a good thing to 
keep up a social resort with virtuous intentions, but it is not as 
some suppose, like patent pills, ample for the cure of all cases, 
but is only an auxiliary and palliative to our infirmities, and 
not to be depended upon where the soul's salvation is at stake. 
As I have before insisted, for it is my duty, and the duty 
of every honest man to give warning and good advice ; that iu 
the language of Paul preaching with the " tongues of men and 
with the tongues of angels, is nothing," and moreover, in lan- 
guage of a great Divine, a preacher may be a dictionary of 
theological follies and a living concordance, and yet know 
nothing and practice less of religion. We must watch and 
pray, and depend upon our own exertions, for though it is be- 
lieved that the clergy have prayed thousands out of hell, and 
more out of purgatory, it can only be done where there is 
plenty of money, so that after all, such clergy are of but little 
service to the poor, who are left to work out their own salva- 
tion in fear and trembling. Nine hundred and ninety-nine iu 
the thousand of mankind, being dupes to their leaders in the 



PREFACE. 41 

various religions of the world, and drones upon society, my 
aim is to show that their divine leaders are men and but men, 
as shown by our own leaders, being daily had up before the 
tribunals of justice, for their free-love spirits, trying to convert 
their sisters to the practice of Mormonism, which from Bishop's 
down, appear to be the revival of the day. I advise then 
the attendance upon divine public worship, as a religious habit, 
and a moral example to society ; but be watchful not to forget 
that the preachings of Paul and of Christ, with their pure 
examples, are ample for the salvation of every soul on earth. 
One fact more, and I shall have closed my tedious preface: 
Much importance is given, and virtue attached to preaching 
in consequence of the divine command to preach in the days of 
the apostles, during which time, and till near four hundred 
years after Christ, there was no other possible means of making 
the gospel known. Now, however, since all the gospels and 
epistles have been collected together and published to all the 
world, and every man can read for himself, we are not depend- 
ent, as in the days of Christ, upon oral testimony, for we have 
God's law and all he has requested of us, printed and in plain 
language before us. That good book asks the question : — 
''What can man conceive more than God can do ?" And I ask, 
what can man say more or better than God has said ; and 
more than all, what right has man to tamper with the words 
of God or pervert them to his own contracted and vile 
purposes. Had the Clergy had any regard either for the 
words or the meek and lovely examples of Christ, the sun 
would not have rosen upon the mangled bodies of seventy- 
thousand Christians, men, women and children, who had been 
butchered between midnight and day, at the memorable Bar- 
tholomew's feast, by the perfidious treachery and permission of 
the clergy, their professed brethren in Christ ; nor would the 
children of God have murdered each other, to the number of 
four hundred, within a short period, during Mary's reign in Eng- 
land, two hundred of whom were burnt at the stake. Bishops 



42 PREFACE. 

burnt Bishops, and no one was safe, who professed religion 
that did not suit the fiendish and fiery fanaticism of ruling par- 
ties. These are but small items, compared with the hills of 
slain and the rivers of blood that have fallen and flown in the 
name of God, our kind and heavenly father, and I only name 
them, to show that except human nature has changed, that the 
clergy are no more to be trusted now than in the bloody days 
which have passed. Indeed, 'their divisions are getting greater, 
and their pretended learning in the Bible with their creeds and 
party-professions only tend to destroy the unity of Christ and 
beget bickerings and bitter feelings in his church, and would to 
God that the pure in heart, and humbly, pious in soul would 
spurn from the church all controversal divinity, and look to 
the Bible instead of men for their religion. This is what I 
most sincerity labor for, as then and never till then will the 
children of God have peace of mind, and full, firm and un- 
shaken faith in the unity, wisdom and goodness of God. 

In farther showing that without inspiration, all speculations 
in religion, but lead us into darkness and doubt, and that the best 
of men may err, by passing the bounds of reason and common 
sense, I will make it appear, for the benefit of the common 
reader, that even the primitive fathers, to whose labors we 
owe much in handing down to us the New Testament, greatly 
erred in evincing towards each other an unchristian spirit of 
intolerance and persecution. At the Council of Nice, where 
Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and Areus, disgracefully 
quarrelled about what was inspired and what not, the various 
gospels and epistles were, for the first time, collected into a 
volume called the New Testament; and the history of this 
council will, by the by, justify me in saying that there may 
have been many errors embodied in with the simple and un- 
mistaken word of God, particularly, when uninspired men, like 
ourselves, full of doctrines, of prejudices, and of wordly pride 
of party, were the assorters, who threw out about one-half of 
the gospels as spurious, which have since been collected into a 



PREFACE. 43 

volume, called the Apocryphal New Testament. In farther 
proof of the position I hold in regard to the corruptions of the 
Bible, see the letters of Sir Isaac Newton, published by 
Bishop Horsley, in which he points out many forgeries and 
corruptions, even long since the Council of Nice, I quote 
only a few remarks of Sir Isaac, in a letter to a friend, as 
published by Bishop Horsley. "If the ancient churches, in 
debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew 
nothing of these two texts, I understand not why we should be 
so fond of them, now the debates are over. And while it is the 
character of an honest man to be pleased, and of a man of in- 
terest to be troubled at the detection of fraud, and of both to run 
most into those passions, when the detection is made plainest, 
I hope this letter will, to one of your integrity, prove so much 
the more acceptable, as it makes a further discovery than you 
have hitherto met with in commentators." He goes on to 
speak of many gross and grievous interpolations and corrup- 
tions committed both by the Latins and the Grreeks, as well as 
by our modern creed-makers, too numerous, to admit notice 
here. But wbat does Sabinus, Bishop of Heraclea, say of this 
Nicene Council, which distracted and split asunder the Christian 
world. He says of this council, ''That with the exception of 
Constantine and Eusebius Paraphilus, they were a set of illite' 
rate simple creatures that understood nothing." And Pappus, in 
his Synodicon to that council, makes known that "tbey having 
promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the 
council, for determination under the communion table in a 
church ; they besought the Lord that the inspired writings 
might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained 
underneath, and that it happened accordingly." 

These facts must convince every reader, of observation, 
that those men of the Nicene Council, who selected and handed 
down to us our religion, were men and nothing but men, who, 
in the language of the Bishop of Alexandria, himself, as ap- 
plied to Arius and his party, that they were " heretics, apos- 



44 PREFACE. 

tates, blasphemous enemies of God, full of impudence and 
impiety, forerunners of Antichrist, imitators of Judas and men 
who it was not lawful to salute or bid God speed." Yes, and 
what might be expected in retalliation, from men of selfish 
feeling and vile party religion, the same gross and disgraceful 
language was hurled back with satanic piety upon Alexander 
and his monopolizing party. 

The spirit of Christ did not attend this censorship of 
waring Divines, every word of whose blind and selfish selec- 
tions we are, by the dictatorial and despotic spirit of modern 
Divines, bound to believe, or suffer the odious and proscribed 
charge of an infidel and an enemy to religion. No, nor did 
they respect the commands of that very book over which they 
set with carnal pride and most arrogant presumption. " Let 
them that is greatest among you be as the younger, and he 
that is chief, as he that doth serve." " He that is greatest 
among you, shall be your servant ; and whosoever exalteth 
himself, shall be abased, while he that humbleth himself shall 
be exalted." Where was the spirit of meekness, of humility 
and of brotherly love those days, and where is it now to be 
found in the profession of antagonal creeds. Mosheim, in his 
Church history says, that the " divine maxims of Christ and 
the teachings of the New Testament, were entirely disregarded 
by the Ecclesiastics who modeled the church under Constan- 
tine." And farther — that " scarcely any two things could be 
more dissimilar than was the simplicity of the gospel dispensa- 
tion from the hierarchy established under Constantine the 
Great." Mosheim, farther goes on to say, " Let none con- 
found the Bishops of the golden age of the first two centuries, 
with those who came after them, for though they were both 
distinguished by the same name, yet they differed extremely, 
in many respects ; the first acting with the humble zeal and 
diligence of a servant, and with the most fervent christian 
affection one toward another, and sympathyzing in their sor- 
rows and distresses, fulfilled the Lord's command of brotherly 



PREFACE. 45 

love and kindness.'' Would to God that Satan had not cor- 
rupted this spirit of unity, and kindred and pious affection 
amongst the Clergy, that we might have more peace of mind and 
a fuller confidence in the religion we profess ; for it is as sure as 
there is a God in heaven, that had we the firm and undeviating 
faith which the anxious soul so much desires, we should neither 
have a horror of death nor a doubt of consequences, but would 
welcome with exulting triumph our exit from time and the 
toils of life to our happy abodes of eternal bliss, to unite again 
the tender ties with departed kindred and friends, where sick- 
ness, sorrow and parties will be known no more, forever and 
forever. Then could we with calm and christian resignation 
look upon death as our greatest friend, and cry out with the 
sainted Paul, death, where is thy sting, grave, thy vic- 
tories ! But, alas, alas ! for the pride of human nature, and 
the unstaid and incorrigible perversity of man, whose sensual 
appetites and hankerings for domination over his poor dying 
fellow mortals, keeps him in perpetual strife with himself and 
with others, to the destruction of his own happiness, as well 
as that of others. Instead of the spotless purity of example 
in the Apostles, and the divine spirit of Christ, which breathed 
with humility, unity, brotherly love and friendship in earlier 
ages of christian piety, our leaders have become proud, pro- 
fligate and litigious in their temper. Riches, ease and worldly 
honors have now become the gods of this world. The spirit of 
pride, avarice, ambition and dominion have proved fatal to the 
piety, peace and happiness of the kingdom of Christ. Humility, 
self-denial and charity is no longer found among the clergy, 
but now they rankle in malice, and vauntingly set in judgment 
upon the consciences of others, as did Calvin upon the broiling 
of poor Servetus. The infernal foe of religion has given to 
those partisan Divines a blind and furious fanaticism which 
spurns the meek and lovely examples of Christ, and persecutes 
to death his humble and faithful followers. The abodes of in- 
nocence and simplicity are rudely invaded by the same cruel 



46 PREFACE. 

spirit, and the natural amusements of the youthful heart, 
prompted by God himself, are blighted by the stern and 
rinkled brow of the puritanical professor, while all social 
courtesies and generous emotions of soul must yield to the 
censorship of church-conventionalities and dwindle down to a 
cold, selfish and one-sided church profession, or be cast out of 
society to bear the frowns of all the waring leaders, who have 
become more arrogant and ostracizing in their despotic career, 
than even those detestable demagogues themselves, who are 
destroying the morals and peace of society. 

All history, both sacred and profane proves the above 
representation to be no exaggeration ; as otherwise, why the 
cruel persecutions and bloody wars of the religious world ? I 
will say in fine, that there never can be a full and undoubting 
faith, as long as Divines make creeds and keep up divisions in 
the church, for it is certainly axiomatic, that where there are 
many adverse guides aiming at the same point, that distraction 
and doubt must exist amongst their followers. There is a 
shallow, dishonest and dishonorable shift made by the clergy, 
when these objections are proposed against their creed-making, 
and in favor of the simple and unmistaken teachings of the 
New Testament, in answering that all creeds are the same and 
of equal virtue in the eyes of God ; for if so, why spend so 
many millions of money in keeping up party-schools ; and as 
a distinguished Divine says, " Why spit hell-fire and damnation 
at each other ?" 

These are things belonging to human nature, and will be 
freely treated of in my little book of "man from his cradle to 
HIS grave." I shall speak with modest diffidence of the grievous 
abuses in the church, nor will I use the gross and vulgar 
language against the authors of those errors, which they have 
heaped with billings-gate abuse upon each other. Knowing 
as well as I do, the wordly pride and sordid interests of party, 
I look for no return of gratitude for my efforts to prune the 



PREFACE. 47 

church of its morbid excrescences which hang as a clinging 
curse upon it. 

Now, as the title of my book makes it my duty to give the 
true history and nature of man, and to expose the evils and 
grievances of society, I shall do so with conscious fidelity, and 
with kind feelings, even to the authors of and actors in the 
errors of life, having charity enough to believe that almost all 
men act from the unavoidable promptings of their education 
and the circumstances that hourly surround and control them. 
I do not then blame any man for his conscientious opinions 
howsoever destructive to the peace and happiness of society ; 
but it is the evil itself which I reprobate ; and in so doing, 
cannot, as an honest man, avoid naming the authors and ac- 
tors, and strive, by exposing their doctrines to lessen their 
influence. I do not blame Confucius, the demi-god of China, 
for the millions of his fellow-beings he has led astray. Zoroaster 
for his millions of blind followers, nor Mahomet for the millions 
of mankind who he has led in a different direction. The Pope 
was not to blame for holding certain doctrines, nor was Martin 
Luther, for dividing his flock and distracting them with doubts 
and heretical schisms, l^o, nor do I blame John Calvin, as a 
man, for his opinions, -though President Shannon, a Divine of 
learning and piety, boldly proclaimed from the pulpit, that the 
doctrines of John Calvin had sent more souls to hell than scep- 
ticism and all other causes besides. Nor was this conscientious 
Divine in turn to be blamed for beating the poor old Bible, 
from which such doctrines could be taken with a fist of ven- 
geance, for he did it with tears in his eyes, and with a counten- 
ance that bespoke the indignant sincerity of his soul. These 
are grave facts, both of history and of every day's observation, 
and I relate them to show the distracted and alarming condi- 
tion of mankind, and to justify myself in saying what I have. 
"We hear the clergy constantly speaking of such and such doc- 
trines, which words, when understood, are a direct contradiction 
of the truth of rehgion itself ; for truth is a unit, and if the 



48 PREFACE. 

Bible be true it is a unit ; and as a unit admits of no divisions 
or doubts ; it is a presumptuous and gross solecism to speak of 
drawing contradictory doctrines from the direct absolute and 
unconditional word of God himself Things certain, as that 
two and two make four, and that the whole is greater than a 
part, admits of no doubts, doctrines, or divisions of opinion ; and 
in like manner, if the religion of the Bible be certainly true, 
Divines, who adopt it as such, ought not to get up disputes 
about what is or is not religion, and whether the word of 
God or the word of man shall prevail. If the word of God be 
uncertain and admits of doubt and doctrines, then indeed will 
there ever be that lamentable confusion that now exists in the 
church of God, and the doctrines of Grecian Mythology, of 
Heathenism, and fabulisms of all kinds are just as safe for the 
soul as Christianism, doubt being doubt, and upon equal footing 
with doubt. To doctrinize, or in other words, to theorize the 
Bible, is to destroy it positively, and yet does every upstart in 
theology, who fancies to lead ofip a party to himself, find a text 
for some new doctrine ; in other terms, doubt of God's word, 
If such tamperings with the positive statutes of God be tole- 
rated, the pettifogger is superior to the law-giver, and forsooth, 
as I have before said, the sovereign interpreter of a law, is cer- 
tainly superior, in the result of such exercise, to the original law- 
giver himself, as the dictum of the demi-god becomes the law of 
idolatrous man, which plainly shows the reason why all the 
monkish mysteries and miracles with the biblical learning of 
papal supremacy has done nothing for religion. Be assured, 
then, my reader, that the only corrective to ignorant delusion 
and to sorcerous design, is the free and independent exercise 
of that sacred reason, which God has given us for a knowledge 
of himself and for the enjoyments of heaven. Our senses are 
given us as inlets of knowledge and the only correctives of those 
wild delusions that haunt us in our dreams, but which are quickly 
corrected by the awakened senses. In like manner, but awaken 
reason, and all the wild delusions of superstition and the vagaries 



PREFACE. 49 

and phantasms of our blind and impotent leaders will vanish like 
the ghosts of midnight before the rising sun. But I must drop 
these reflexions, and close my tedious preface ; and, in so doing, 
say to my clerical friends, that I have no other object in view, 
but to give them less labor and more religion. And now, may 
the unity, the might and the majesty of Jehovah, our great and 
eternal father claim the undivided gratitude and the heart-felt 
and unfeigned worship of every creature in existence. And, 
0, may his glorious manifestations of love and mercy in his 
bleeding son, soften the asperities of christian hatred, and melt 
us into one millennial brotherhood, that we may have a heaven 
instead of a bedlam and hell m earth. The reader will excuse 
me, in again aflBrming that my object is not to lessen the dignity 
and influence of the clergy, but to elevate them, and the people 
with them, to that high standard of moral perfection and of 
rational religion, which God has intended for them, and which 
the very name of unperverted divinity legitimely claims. And 
now, in conclusion, let me say, that 1858 years of experience 
has convinced me that the preaching of men's creeds and the 
hypotheses of the schools, will never make an honest commu- 
nity, nor a sincere and unpretending Christian, and hence it is, 
I insist upon the support of preachers, and the preaching of 
the gospel, not according to Calvin, to Wesley, to Campbell, 
Mother Ann Lee, or to Brigham Young and the ten thousand 
other theological doubts and distractions, manufactured in our 
schools, but according to the unsophisticated, unmistaken and 
simple hearted religion of Christ. In short, it is that sacred 
truth, and honest and even handed justice, the brightest attri- 
butes of the eternal Godhead, I aim to sustain, and not the 
ever vacillating, vicious and waring. — Yes, and I may add, 
the damning controversial theology of our party-schools, got 
up by the artifice of man, and sustained by that worldly pride 
and ambition which destroy the kingdoms of earth as well as 
that of Christ. That kind-hearted, meek, benevolent and 
forgiving religion of the early church, has been driven from it, 

3 



50 PREFACE. 

by heartless creeds and the pomp and pride of party, and in 
its stead there prevails a revengeful malignity of persecution, 
even to death. 

It would be dishonest to say that I have exaggerated, and 
that all parties go hand in hand with one harmonious, kind and 
brotherly feeling, for if so, why are our religious papers filled 
with billings-gate virulence, and why so many abusive books 
and so much heated discussion in our open pulpits. Finding 
empty pews and scant tythes in our little town overflowing 
with creeds, the clergy, very naturally, (for it is my business 
to teach nature,) became touched in the most tender parts, 
and resolved, at once, and for J;he first time, to unite their 
forces in one common and necessary cause, and thus rouse up 
that laggard spirit of revival which seemed slow to its duty. — • 
And now it is that my delicate sensibility would be silent, but 
my ardent desire for a universal brotherhood, and my duty as 
a true historian, urges me to record the fact — that when all 
the traps were set, and the teams harnessed, for a long pull 
and a strong pull, and the hill of Zion full in view, the oldest 
horse in the holy team kicked up and broke the chains. — The 
spirit now subsided, the waters calmed down, and not a bubble 
was seen to ruffle the quiet surface of the pool. One of the 
most intellectual and learned ministers of the calvinistic creed, 
in the United States, forbid his people to ''Homologate " Now, 
I shall not take up time in searching back through the dark 
portals and lenghtened corridors of past eternity, to see from 
those most ancient of records, whether his people had there 
and then obtained from the hand of God himself, their irre- 
vocable passports for heaven, but take it for granted, that he 
honestly thought so, and consequently, as a sensible man, 
pronounced it a folly to be kicking up such a fuss, at this late 
period of time, and in truth, in so doing, seeming to doubt the 
word of God in taking care of his own. These may seem to 
be small and local matters, with the unreflecting, but they are 



PREFACE. 51 

items in the history of religion, that speak volumes upon the 
subject of mystic creeds and monkish craft. 

The lofty view I have of God is not from the contemptible 
opinions of men, but from his glorious and harmonious works, 
and consequently could not teach as do his chosen ministers, 
that — 

He resolves and regrets^ 

That he snubs and he frets, 
And yet after all, is quite elever ; 

For now fret as he may, 
At the world and its way, 

He hangs to his elect forever. 

The great error in the theological teachings of the day, is 
that the contracted and selfish feelings of men induce them to 
interpret scriptures to suit their own vile and selfish views, 
thus bringing God down to a level with the worst of men. 
They represent him as a short-sighted botch, who has made, 
been disappointed in results, fretted and unmade. That he is 
captious, partial and unjust, selecting a few, from all eternity, 
as favorites of heaven, "not according to their works, but 
according to his own purpose." Such exhibitions of Deity 
may make us fear him as we do the Devil ; but it can never 
beget that sincere hearted and unalloyed love which a lovely 
object will invariably and unavoidably command. God is 
made more cruel and neglectful of his children than any parent 
on earth — yea, more hard-hearted than a dog, for the Saint 
Bernard dogs will risk their own lives through snow and storm 
to save the life of even the stranger who has lost his way ; while 
God is said to send all his children, children made by his own 
hand, (for they did not make themselves) to perdition. This is 
hard upon the unconscious infant and upon the poor heathen, who 
has faithfully sought his father in the dark, but got lost, because 
that father afforded him no light, as an excuse to thrust him in 
the burnings of hell, forever and forever ! These doctrines are 
promulgated from a false interpretation of scripture, and my 
object here is to defend our kind and ever adorable Creator 



62 PREFACE. 

from such heinous and mischievous slanders. I hold that when 
we meet with passages of scripture that, if taken literally, 
contradict each other, and which would be disgraceful to an 
honorable man, that we are bound in our duty to the holy 
character of God, and to every just rule of reason, to inter- 
pret it, not according to our scurrilous creeds and base party- 
purposes, but according to the wise, just, and ever to be 
adored attributes of our kind and loving father, as learned 
from his own laws, the book of nature, where we read that 
he has given, even to the brute creation, a loving care for 
their offspring, and that he cannot, therefore, neglect his own 
The fishes of the sea, the birds of the air and the beasts of the 
forest, will die for their young, and can it be, that God who 
gave this heavenly love and kind protection, will neglect or 
maltreat his own offspring. 

And now, Lord, the Clergy bless, 

Whose hearts are doubtless pure ; 

But curse, curse their cursed creeds, 

And make religion sure. 

And deal not hard with them, Lord 1 

But strike in love a balance sheet, 

That they may figure up and meet. 

They labor hard ia Satan's cause, 

Not knowing what they do ; 

And sure as two and two make four, 

My words are strictly true. 

And say, now Lord, can all be true, 

Of tales they tell and teach of you, 

That millions from an early date, 

Thou hast doomed to saddest fate, 

Without a cause to them made known. 

And that without a crime their own. 

And tell us, Lord, if it can be. 

That three make one, and one makes three, 

For if not so, the truth I'll tell. 

That all creed-makers go to helL 

But have this, Lord, just as thou wilt. 

And punish not their creeds as guilt, 

But save thou. Lord, from such dread ate, 

By pointing out their sad estate • 

Next show to them their wicked way, 

Of leading aU thy sheep astray, 

Then curse, O Lord, their quips and quirks, 

And turn their creeds to honest works. 



PREEACE. 53 

The reader must excuse me for writing in this vein of good 
humored sarcasm, as it is not intended, either to be disrespectful 
or reproachful ; but as the most simple and efficient corrective 
of those ludicrous theological dogmas, which have wormed 
themselves into the very vitals of religion, and that are not only 
adverse to the true spirit of religion and contrary to the simple 
teachings of Christ, but shocking to the sense of common jus- 
tice and abhorrent to sacred reason. 



INTRODUCTION. 

As the object of the work spoken of in the preface will be 
to solve the enigma of mind — the great desideratum of all meta- 
physical philosophy, I have thought it well to pursue man in 
his mystic march, and to exhibit him in his varied phases as he 
has from age to age, appeared upon the stage of life. — And as 
sadly tragic as may be the drama, I will bring it in review be- 
fore the reader, that he may see himself as in a mirror, and 
profit from the picture. That man has ever been in error, both 
in regard to his temporal and eternal well-being, will be seen 
from the distracting and destructive doctrines maintained upon 
those points. The perpetual oscillations of human opinion with 
the palpable contradictions and astounding falsehoods pro- 
pagated by learned men and leaders of their distracted parties 
are all in proof of an error — a most grievous error in the educa- 
tion of man, who, it will be shown, is a creature of circum- 
stances or education, and whose eyes may yet be opened to the 
paths of truth and his soul elevated to that high standard of 
moral perfection which is to be obtained alone by the study of 
nature — God's benign, immutable and eternal laws. Truth is of 
God, it is a unit, is grounded in the course and constitution of na- 
ture, and is as imperishable as God himself. Sir William Hamilton, 
the most profound philosopher and critic of the day, says "that 
the past history of philosophy, has in a great measure been only 
a history of variations and errors." A volume of such quota- 
tions might be made, but I will bring up the facts, facts incon- 
testible and above all authority. We need not go back to 
Brahminical sages, nor to Oriental Pantheism, to Egyptian 
Astrology, Heathen Mythology, or the endless shades of Pag- 



INTRODUCTION. 55 

anism, to show that man has been chained to the grossest and 
most degrading errors, and led as an ox by the despotic opinion 
of others. This may seem a bold and degrading assertion, but 
it is one in which the history of facts will bear me out. To 
grant the mighty influence which the opinion of one man may 
have over millions of his fellow-mortals for ages in succession, 
we have but to learn that Confucius gave religion and laws to 
China, Zoroaster to Persia and Mahomet to Arabia, and 
thousands of instances are to be found in the same history of 
man, where mind has held despotic dominion over mind. Mil- 
lions languished under a most grievous malady — all from the 
formulae of a' single corrupt mind ; and yet no one could think 
for himself till Martin Luther rose up and prescribed for them. 
Strange and starthng it is to think of, that he alone broke those 
adamantine^jhains that* bound both the political and the reli- 
gious world to the shrine of a corrupt and degrading hierarchy. 
There is still an individual in Italy, who, by his dictum wields 
the minds of a large portion of the Christian world, with as 
much ease as a boy whirls his top. Joe Smith, the Mormon 
imposter, is a lamentable instance of the want of correct educa- 
tion and independent thought amongst our fellow-mortals. His 
craft and wiley tricks have already grasped the four quarters 
of the globe, and creatures of all languages and nations are 
crossing stormy seas and traversing forests wide and wild to 
worship at his shrine. Thousands of smaller leaders have risen 
up from time to time, to lead captive the unthinking - in the 
various isms and dogmas of the day. Juggling demagogues and 
metaphysical fanatics have also entered the vortex of mental 
distraction, and swelled the scene of unhallowed bickerings and 
revelings without charity. No brotherhood is found on earth : 
no bonds of union or ties of friendship to be felt. No one God, 
one people, one church is granted, all is left in darkness and 
doubt, and each little party, impiously arrogating to themselves 
the special gift of heaven, withdraws themselves within their 
own bewildered and bewildering webb. All have agreed to 



56 INTRODUCTION'. 

disagree in all things, save, only, that reason is to be condemned 
as the enemy of mystery and the faith in things unseen, and 
that the bulls and thunder bolts of the church are to be hurled 
with pious fury against poor nature and the works of God, or in 
less offensive language, the progress of science which is most 
assuredly the sublime and glorious work of God. To justify 
every sentiment I may utter and render incontestible every 
statement I may make, I refer to the record of facts. Here 
the reader will find the trial and condemnation of Galileo — one 
of the greatest and best of men for casting off the factitious and 
libellous estimates of nature, and bringing the mighty and mar- 
vellous works of God to the light of day. Here it is, reader, 
ponder over it, and weep for the ignorance and fanaticism of 
man, but dispair not, for great celestial luminaries as Galileo, 
Newton, Bacon and Comte will rise from time to time, and 
will extinguish those flickering and ephemeral little lights, that 
like the ignis fatuus, but lead us into bogs and brush : — 

" I, Galileo Galilei, aged seventy years, and on my knees 
before you, most reverend Lords, Cardinals and General Inquisi- 
tion of the Universal Church against heretical depravity, having 
my eyes on the holy Gospels, which I do touch with my lips, 
do swear that I beheve, always have believed, always will be- 
lieve every article which the Holy Catholic, Apostolic Roman 
Church holds and teaches and preaches ; and as I have written 
a book in which I have maintained that the sun is the center, 
which false doctrine is repugnant to the holy Scriptures, I with 
sincere heart, do abjure, curse and detest the said error and 
heresy, and generally every other error, and heresy, and sect con- 
trary to said holy Church." 

This and the burning of the philosophic and pious Servetus, 
by John Calvin and his compeers are but as sands upon the 
sea-beach, compared with the widespread butcheries and misery 
inflicted in the murdering of thought in the name of God. 
Every aspiring effort of the soul to free itself from the fetters 
of superstition, and rise to the throne of God by his demon- 



INTRODUCTION. 5t 

strable laws of science has been closely watched and bitterly 
denounced as heretical and contrary to the cannons of the 
Church. The power of the magnet and the discovery of the 
compass and navigation were supposed to be the work of evil 
spirits. The discovery of gunpowder by Roger Bacon, was 
condemned as an unquestionable work of the devil. The 
presence of sulphur being too odorous for denial. Printing 
was certainly of Satan, and the author sought to be put to 
death by the learned Clergy. His house in which he printed, 
paper and type were all burnt and a guard set by those deeply 
learned and pious Divines to prevent the devils from escaping. 
These are undeniable facts in history ; and farther, Harvey's 
discovery of the circulation of the blood was reviled by the 
learned Clergy, as false and highly dangerous to the vitals of 
religion, "For," said they, "if the bounding spirit (pulse) 
so plainly felt and seen struggling to escape from its ten- 
ement of clay, be nothing but the circulation of a fluid, it will 
render all those glorious doctrines of the immateriality of the 
soul doubtful, and God's holy Scriptures null and void." 
Where, now, I seriously ask you, reader, is the result of such 
learned and alarming predictions of Divines. " If,'' said these 
same learned prelates who burnt the first book on Astronomy, 
"it should be shown that the sun is not a lamp that turns 
around this world to give it light, it will destroy the Bible- 
faith, which says that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still 
for a given time, and it obeyed." I now ask the honest reader 
whether these learned decisions, or the word and mighty works 
of God are true ? 

This same and privileged body (almighty with the people) 
strove to put down the science of geology as wholly incom- 
patible with the Mosaic account of Creation, but their bab- 
blings against the formation of the earth as well as against its 
movements have passed as an idle breath to be laughed at by 
boys in the science of nature. The writings of Puflfendorf and 
of Grotius were in like manner denounced as unsafe, because 

3 * 



58 INTRODUCTION. 

their maxims and morals were taken from the laws of nature 
as grounded in our constitutions by our Creator, and not from 
their interpretation of the Bible — a book not intended to teach 
us science or politics, but humble and unpretending piety, 
which, by the bye, did not suit the cupidity of the Church 
officials. Unfortunately for the progress of science and of 
morals, and for the happiness and dignity of man, the Clergy 
have held a degrading and stultifying influence over the minds 
of the masses. Even the gifted and pious Wm. Paley, author 
of " Moral Philosophy" and the " Religion of Nature," has not 
escaped the censure of the Church, simply because he ap- 
proaches the throne of God through his works and teaches his 
attributes from the constitution and nature of things as seen 
in the world around us. If those ignorant and narrow-minded 
Clergy were not blinded by a gross and degrading superstition, 
they would see that the Bible does not throughout its whole 
course, give a single argument even for the existence of a God, 
but assumes and asserts it as a fact demonstrable from the 
design and wonderous wisdom of his works. "The heavens 
declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth his 
handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto 
night showeth knowledge." Thus and thus ' alone through 
evident design, infinite wisdom and boundless power do we 
infer a God — and why then be so jealous of nature, and the 
things of the world as impiously to deny it ? Shakespeare 
says with equal truth and eloquence : " There are sermons in 
stones, texts in trees, books in running brooks and good in 
every thing." As we quote from memory we may not give 
the exact words of the passage. 

As I aim not to censure any unjustly or give offense to a 
single brother, I here most distinctly and without disguise as- 
sert that my remarks in regard to the clergy are not generic, 
and that when I speak of juggling demagogues, I do not include 
all statesmen, and in like manner do I grant an honorable 
exception to the classification of an ignorant, corrupt and 



INTRODUCTION. 59 

knavish priesthood. I am as sincere and as ardent an ad- 
vocate for the true teachings of the Bible as those quibbling 
triflers who, by applying its teachings to science, politics and 
things in general, have shown its glaring inapplicability, and 
consequently brought it into doubt and disrespect among a 
large portion of the community. As I have said in my stand, 
point there is a great error and a grievous wrong in the teach- 
ings of those guardians of the divine law. And here, as else- 
where, I, in proof, refer to the history of facts. 

God has from the days of Adam to the present been devising 
ways and means for the conversion of man, even to the degra- 
dation, suffering and death of his only begotten son, and 
startling, most grievously startling to sum up eighteen hun- 
dred and fifty-nine years since that vicarious and redeeming 
death, and yet after all, the incorrigible depravity and wick- 
edness of the world is as unstayed as ever, while the Devil, 
according to the preachings of the day, is reaping almost the 
entire harvest cultivated by* God's own hand and watered by 
his blood. These are facts, ominous facts of deep and awful 
import. God has called, but* his call has been responseless 
and ineffectual, and why ? The fault cannot be in God him- 
self, but that the preachers of Satan are more effectual a hun- 
dred to one than those of God. It would be a libellous per- 
sonality upon God to say that he connives at or gives his ap- 
probation to the supremacy of the Devil, which leaves the 
fault with man alone. Then accuse me not of exaggeration 
or beating too loudly the tocsin of alarm, as the heralds of the 
pulpit daily proclaim the same, and the columns of our religious 
papers are filled with it. I here make a quotation from an 
able sermon delivered a few days since, upon "the alarming 
increase of crime," and that in the midst of our churches and 
colleges : " It is true that there are in the world six hundred 
and seventy millions of our fellow-creatures who are still 
bowing down to stocks and stones, ignorant,.of the living and 
true God, and all this in a time emphatically called " the age 



60 INTRODUCTION. 

of missions." Our Sabbaths are openly and legally violated by 
liquor and other trafic, open railways and excursion parties 
with many other " habitual customs.'' I here relate an incident 
full of the philosophy of mind and applicable to the present 
discourse, that occured amongst an upright and honest tribe 
of Northwestern Indians with whom I was spending some 
time. A missionary applied to the chief for permission to es- 
tablish a mission, upon which the chief asked him "what he 
expected to do for his people ?" and the answer w^as: "To 
make them Christians." The chief, not understanding exactly 
his meaning, farther questioned "whether he could make them 
honest, sober and truthful ?" The missionary answering in the 
affirmative, he rejoined: "Then, go back to your own people 
who understand your language better than mine, and when 
you make them honest, sober and truthful, call upon me, and 
I will aid you. You, Christians come amongst us and make 
my people drunk, debauch our wives and daughters, rob us of 
our furs, and if we resist, shoot xts and get up border wars." 

In my review of religious persecutions, I but sound the 
sad knell of departed time, and could I call up the victims of 
misrule and dread oppression from their gory beds, the shud- 
dering scene would be beyond the power of pen to depict. 
When I look back at the hills of slain and rivers of blood and 
listen to the widow's sorrowful lament and the orphan's 
piteous cry, I feel — yes — when I look back through moulder- 
ing ages at the rolling tide of man bursting upon the rocky 
shores of time and sinking to oblivion without a name, and 
how nation has swept nation as with the besom of destruction, 
I feel for their wrongs and am deeply conscious that that wrong 
is in man, and that it is my solemn and religious duty to give 
my feeble efforts to the discovery and exposure of such wrongs. 
But let the pious reader look back upon the reign of terror 
with a heart that can feel for the woes of others and he will 
witness with myself the horrid and appalling scenes that arose 
from an erring rule in the church of God. He will see those 



INTRODUCTION, 61 

professed followers of the meek and lowly Jesus unfurling their 
bloody banners and fanning the flames of persecution. Then 
let him gaze upon the malignant and scowling features of those 
fiery demons as they stood in grim array around their broiling 
victims, gloating upon their agonizing struggles and protracted 
groans, and he will assert a wrong, an impious and detestable 
wrong, a wrong that my pen cannot slander. Yes, a wrong 
that Satan himself could not wrong. My blood runs chill and 
my heart sinks within me in contemplating the scenes of blood" 
shed and horror under the reign of inquisitorial power. Every 
holy aspiration was choked, and the freeborn soul that struggled 
for its high destiny was ground to earth. The pall of death 
was spread upon the family altar, and a mournful, silent and 
melancholy gloom enshrouded the sacred circle, dreadful and 
appalling became the name of religion, and blight and desola- 
tion was in the wake of its holy fathers. 

Those saints of God, instead of being the salt and savor 
of earth, have become the spoilers, and their tracks, from early 
ages, have been clothed with blood. The malignant cruelties 
of the Jews in their slaughter of innocent women and children, 
gave a license to the Saints in Mexico and South America for 
the wide spread rapine and murder where thousands upon 
thousands of our meek, innocent and unoffending brothers, 
children of the one great and eternal Father, were hunted 
with blood hounds and cut in pieces and fed to the dogs. 
And here is the falsely interpreted authority under which 
they acted : ''Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, 
and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance 
upon the heathen and punishments upon the people, to bind 
their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, 
to execute upon them the judgment written. This honor have 
all his Saints, praise ye the Lord !" Psalm 149. 

Thus have I summed up a few graphic facts in the history 
of man, to show the mischief which may result from a false 
education and the misinterpretation of the rights of man and 



62 INTRODUCTION. 

of the will of God. But it may be said that I have exhibited 
the dark side of the picture, and that the world has become 
more pious and less cruel. This, every honest man will find who 
observes for himself and sees the sordid of the sharp grasp and traf- 
ficking world around him, how neighbor strives to overreach neigh- 
bor, and brother to cheat brother, is not so. Besides, he will read 
but little else in our daily news than cruel wars, from combined 
powers down to fillibustering and plundering parties. The 
bloody dagger and the burglar's hand are rife in their midnight 
deeds, while forgeries, defalcations and debaucheries from the 
sacred preceints of divinity and the high functionaries of govern- 
ment, down to the street scavenger, have become common. All 
this may be accounted for from the false training of our youths, 
who should be taught meekness, piety, brotherly love and friend- 
ship, and to bestow those kind and social courtesies that bind man 
to man, and contribute to the harmony and happiness of society. 
But, on the contrary, we find that the mere tyro in our theo- 
logical schools, with high notions of chivalry and the honors of 
the world bears deadly arms about his person, and only recently 
a pupil of divinity in a neighboring school shot his brother and 
killed him. The vice-regents of God and holy teachers, them- 
selves, become the inflaraers of war, and join in the struggles of 
political mobs and embroiled elements in human strife. No 
honest man can deny that we live in an age of reckless extrav- 
agance and lawless ambition, nor will it be a slander to affirm 
that the world has ever been governed by knaves and fools, 
and that it is under the supremacy of their influence that we 
are now suffering. The brainless devotee of fashion becomes 
almighty over the minds of men, and as well might the friend to 
humanity attempt the stay of time as the march of fashion. As 
arise those delusive lights from the beds of physical decay that 
but involve their followers in bewildering mazes so from the 
hotbeds of moral corruption and depravity, may arise in Paris 
a glare of fashion that catches the eye of the vain and giddy 
world. Princes and peasants bow alike to its mandates, and 



INTRODUCTION. 63 

countless millions are paid for its formulae. The veriest varlet 
in a prescribed and artistic garb receives more attention from 
and has more influence in the fashionable world than a Howard 
or a man of the finest attainments, while the giddy whirls and 
amorous wiles of the ball-room hold an unquestioned supremacy 
over moral worth and modest mien. Books of science and 
moral teaching meet with no encouragement while works of 
fiction that feed only the degenerate and sensual passions of the 
day are devored as they issue from the press. Those who do 
not fall under the dominion of fools are led captive by juggling 
priests and knavish demagogues. By sermons in Latin and 
tricks of hocus-pocus men are brought with their tithes to the 
feet of their leaders, while women are led, as it were, by the 
hand of love to the altar of confession. The snickering demag- 
ogue, too, knows well how to bait his hooks and set his snares. 
He smiles with compassion upon the people, tells them of the 
oppression and wrong of party till swelling with generous emo- 
tions of honest indignation and bursting out in clamorous 
denunciations, he is soon found riding on the car of state and 
enjoying the gifts of popular favor. Ko anecdote, too low and 
loathsome, no falsehood, too gross and glaring for the public 
taste. The prognosis from such a gangrenous state of the body 
politic must be unfavorable — yes, fatal ; but I have not room 
to depict the anticipated results, my only object being to show 
a low state of morals in all the departments of life, that man is 
a creature of circumstances, and consequently that he may be 
improved by a different course of education, which course I 
shall, in the end prescribe. Talk to a high functionary of 
Government as I have done, just sttaggering out from a dog- 
gery and gambling-house about the dark and lowering sky that 
obscures the star of state, and of the probable fate of our 
happy Government's going, as all others have done, through 
successive ages, and he will exultingly respond, as is usual for 
our deluded people to do, that "our Government has never 
fallen, and it has a growing strength that must endure forever.'' 



64 INTRODUCTION. 

Poor fool — he might as truthfully have said : " I have never 
died, and therefore, I never will die," when the sturdy oak, 
deeply rooted for five hundred years, has its time and is doomed 
to decay, in common with all things subject to the fate of 
time. Where are the numberless governments that have had 
their rise, progress and power through past ages ? Where is 
proud Babylon with her hanging gardens and towering walls ? 
And where her Kimrods and her men of mighty fame ? Where 
Balbec, Nineveh, Tyre, and Sidon ? And the fathers who gave 
them birth ? They, hke Sparta, Athens and Rome, with their 
heroes, orators, statesmen and philosophers have been crushed 
by the hand of time. 

To show more fully the many and mischievous errors in the 
teachers and trainers of the human mind, and how parasitical 
and degraded we may become by man worship, or founding our 
faith on the opinions of others, I will make a few quotations from 
the best authorities. As man in all ages are governed by then* 
opinions, and particularly in matters of religion, I shall first 
refer to the errors of the Bible, whence almost all our views of 
right and wrong are derived. These quotations will bring up 
the whole of the discrepant testimony there recorded, face to 
face, and upon cross-examination will show to the reader that 
their pretended divinity, and inspiration, and infallibility are 
wholly incompatible with the attributes of a wise, just and im- 
mutable God, and consequently how it is that nine hundred and 
ninety-nine out of the thousand of the world's jury have either 
disbeUeved or disregarded this testimony. And here I wish it 
distinctly understood that my aim is not against the Bible, but 
it is to prune it of those many and foul excrescences that have 
well nigh destroyed its vitals. These passages of Scripture 
will show that the doctrine of the canonical and inspirational 
infallibihty of the entu-e Bible, is most assuredly false. The 
natural defects of men through whose hands the Scriptures 
have passed — with their passions, prejudices and varied interests, 
have necessarily made it so. Those men were not all inspired 



INTRODUCTION. 65 

and no better than the Divines of the present day, who under 
strong prejudices and adverse interests, drag each other to the 
stake, which could not be the case, were the word of God made 
plain, and men were intelhgent and sincere. It is against this 
awful error, then, that has torn the vitals of religion asunder and 
kept up deadly feuds amongst the followers of Christ, that I, 
upon the peril of my eternal death, have and will forever fight : 

" That the not adhermg to those notions, reason dictates 
concerning the nature of God, has been the occasion of all 
superstition, and all those innumerable mischiefs that mankind, 
on account of religion, have done either to themselves or one 
another. Having in general shown the absurdity of not being 
governed by the reason of things in all matters of religion, I 
shall now in particular show the fatal consequences of not ad- 
hering to those notions reason dictates concerning the nature of 
God. Chavron, though a priest of that Church which abounds 
with superstition, the most pernicious as well as absurd, seems 
to have a right notion of superstition, as well as justly to abhor 
it in Saying that " superstition and most other errors and defects 
in religion are owing chiefly to a want of becoming and right ap- 
prehensions of God : We debase and bring him down to us, 
we compare and judge him by ourselves, we clothe him with 
our infirmities, and then proportion and fit our fancy accord- 
ingly. What horrid profanation and blasphemy is this !" 

"It is men's not being governed by the reason of things 
which makes them divide about trifles and lay the utmost stress 
on such things as wise men would be ashamed of. It is on the 
account of these that the different sects set the highest value 
on themselves and think they are the peculiar favorites of 
heaven, while they condemn all others for opinions and prac- 
tices not more senseless than those themselves look on as essen- 
tials. And were it not in so serious a matter, it would be 
diverting to see how they damn one another for placing religion 
in whimsical notions and fantastical rites and ceremonies without 
making the least reflection on what, they, themselves are doing. 



66 INTRODUCTION. 

" What reason has a Papist, for instance, to laugh at an 
Indian who thinks it contributes to his future happiness to die 
with a cow's tail in his hands, while he lays as great stress on 
rubbing a dying man with oil ? Has not the Indian as much 
right to morahze this action of his and show its siguificancy, as 
the Papist any of his mystic rites, or hocus pocus tricks, which 
have as little foundation in the nature or reason of things?" 

The great Dr. Scott says : " While men behold the state 
of religion thus miserably broken and divided, and the profes- 
sors of it crumbled into so many sects and parties, and each 
party spitting fire and damnation at its adversary, so that if all 
say true, or indeed, any two of them in five hundred sects which 
there are in the world, (and, for aught I know, there may be 
five thousand, ) it is five hundred to one^ but that every one is 
damned, because every one damns all but itself, and itself is 
damned by four hundred and ninety-nine. 

The pious Bishop Taylor says : " We could not expect that 
but God would some way or other punish Christians by reason 
of their pertinacious disputing of things unnecessary, undeter- 
minable and unprofitable and for their hating and persecuting 
their brethren which should be as dear to them as their own 
lives, for not consenting to one another's follies and senseless 
vanities." 

" And can we," says Dr. Burnet, " think without astonish- 
ment that such matters as giving the sacrament in leavened or 
unleavened bread, or an explication of the procession of the 
Holy Ghost, whether it was from the Father and the Son, or 
from the Father by the Son, could have rent the Greek and 
Latin Churches so violently one from another, that the Latins 
rather than assist the other, looked on till they were destroyed 
by the Ottoman family." 

"The banditti and bravos most religiously observe the 
orders of their Church about not eating flesh, etc., and in- 
stances of this nature might be produced from the most im- 
moral in all churches, who, not satisfied with practicing such 



INTRODUCTION. 6T 

things themselves, think it highly meritorious to compel others 
to do the same. And, indeed, the substance of religion has 
been destroyed in most places to make room for superstition, 
immorality and persecution, which last when men want reason 
to support their opinions, always supplies its place. And are 
there not numbers in the best Reformed Churches of the same 
sentiments, with those Dr. Scott complains of? "Who,^^ he 
says, " persuade themselves that God is wonderfully concerned 
about small things, about trifling opinions and indifferent actions 
and the rites, and modes, and appendages of religion, and under 
this persuasion they hope to atone for all the immoralities of 
their lives by the forms and outsides of religion, by uncom- 
manded severities and affected singularities, by contending for 
opinions and stickling for parties, and being pragmatically 
zealous about the borders and fringes of religion. And I am 
afraid it is too true as is observed in the " Letters concerning 
Inspiration," that men have thought it an honor to be styled 
that which they call zealous, orthodox, to be firmly linked to a 
certain party, to load others with calumnies and to drown by 
absolute authority the rest of mankind, but have taken no care 
to demonstrate the sincerity and fervor of their piety by an 
exact observation of the Gospel morals : Which has come to 
pass, by reason that orthodoxy agrees very well with our pas- 
sions, whereas the severe morals of the Gospel are incompatible 
with our way of living. And one would be apt to think that 
zeal for speculative opinions and zeal for morality were scarce 
consistent, should he form his judgment from what he sees most 
practiced in the Christian world. Moral goodness is the great 
stamp and impress that render men current in the esteem of 
God, whereas, on the contrary, the common brand by which 
hypocrites and false pretenders to religion are stigmatized, is 
their being zealous for the positives, and cold and indifferent as 
to the morals of religion. 

And in general, we find mere moral principles of such weight 
that, in our dealings with men, we are seldom satisfied by the 



68 INTRODUCTION. 

fullest assurance given us of their zeal in religion, until we hear 
something farther of their character. If we are told a man is 
religious, we still ask what are his morals, but if we hear at 
j&rst that he has honest, moral principles, and is a man of 
moral justice and good temper, we seldom tliink of the other 
question — whether he is religious and devout ? " 

" It is a general observation in history, where anything has 
had only the appearance of piety, and might be observed with- 
out any virtue in the soul, it easily found entertainment amongst 
superstitious nations. Hence, Tacitus says: " Men, extremely 
liable to superstition, are at the same time as violently averse 
to religion." Le Clerc not only makes the same remark, but 
says : " That those who had a confused notion of Christian 
piety, believed it could not maintain itself without the help of 
outward objects; and I know not what heathenish pomp which 
at last extinguished the spirit of the gospel, and substituted 
Paganism in its room." 

• "A man who has or pretends to have a blind zeal for those 
things which discriminate his sect, though he be ever so im- 
moral, too often finds countenance and credit from them, and 
though thought a devil by others, passes for a saint with his 
own party, so that the superstitious lie under temptations to 
the vicious, and the vicious to act superstitiously. Nay, the 
way that men are apt to take to pacify God, "is," as Arch- 
bishop Tillotson observes, " by some external piece of religion. 
Such as were sacrifices amongst the jews and heathens. The 
jews pitched upon those which were most pompous and solemn 
— the richest and the most costly — so that they might but 
keep their sins, they were well enough content to offer up any- 
thing else to God. They thought nothing too good for him — 
provided he would not oblige them to become better." 

" What advantage have not the Popish priests gained by 
their arts of reconciling the practice of vice with the prospect 
of heaven." The Jesuits, though the youngest order, yet 
flourish most, being the most expert in this artifice, as may be 



INTRODUCTION. 69 

seen in Mr. "Paschal's Provincial Letters." But all the Popish 
priests agree in defending their superstition by fire and fagot, 
while their churches are open sanctuaries for the most flagi- 
tious — which shows how sensible they are, that superstition 
and immorality support each other. And, perhaps, it is but 
reasonable that the places where they learn vile things should 
protect them when they have committed the vilest. It is by 
these means that holy Church gets a terrible party who can- 
not refuse to maim or murder as their spiritual protectors 
direct; for fear of being delivered up to civil justice, and not 
only your mean rogues, but even the greatest have been fre- 
quently screened this way. The supposing indifferent things 
equally commanded with matters of morality, tends to make 
men believe they are alike necessary. Nay, the former will, 
by degrees, get the better with the superstitious, and acquire 
such a veneration by age, and to make men have a recourse 
to them upon all occasions, though ever so unseasonable. If 
people can be so far imposed on as to admit such things into 
their religion, they will as easily be persuaded to put a greater 
stress on things though of some use in religion than their 
nature will bear, to the confounding things of the greatest 
moment with those of the smallest; and if this is reckoned 
superstition, much more ought the other to be thought so." 

''It is to these principles, we owe the most cruel persecu- 
tions, inquisitions, crusades, and massacres, and that princes 
have endeavored not only to destroy their subjects, but to 
disinherit their own issue, and to make room for supposititious 
children. And it is to this principle, we also owe innumerable 
tumults, seditions, and rebellions even against the best of 
princes as well as endless feuds and animosities in private fami- 
lies, and among the nearest relations. The Jews, as they were 
the most superstitious, so were they the most cruel, and as 
the Papists have beyond all other Christians introduced into 
religion things which are far from contributing to the good of 
mankind, so they have exercised a matchless cruelty for the 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

support of them; and, no wonder, since their priests gain by 
the superstition of the people, and consequently inspire them 
with a proportionate hatred against all who will not comply 
with it." So much for the great Dr. Scott's views. 

"Archbishop Tillotson says that "it will be hard to deter- 
mine how many degrees of innocence and good nature, or of 
coldness and indifference in religion are necessary to over- 
balance the fury of the blind zeal, since several zealots had 
been excellent men, if their religion had not hindered them, if 
the doctrines and principles of their Church had not spoiled 
their disposition," Oh, what a solemn satire upon the fashion- 
able, outward profession of religion I Here we have the reason 
which the celebrated Chillingworth gives for turning papist: 
" Because the Protestant cause is now and hath been from the 
beginning maintained with falsifications and calumnies whereof 
the prime controversy writers are notoriously and in a high 
degree guilty" — and upon his return to the Church he says: 
'Iliacos intra muros peccatur et txtra^ which is in plain English, 
Priests of all denominations will lie alike. 

If Mr. Locke reasons justly, no mission can be looked on 
to be divine, that delivers anything derogating from the honor 
of the one only true and visible God, or inconsistent with 
natural religion and the rules of morality; because God having 
discovered to man the unity and majesty of his eternal God- 
head, and the truths of natural religion and morality by the 
light of reason, he cannot be supposed to back the contrary by 
revelation, for that would be to destroy the evidence and use 
of reason, without which men cannot be able to distinguish 
divine revelation from diabolical imposture. 

Locke is assuredly right, for whatever is true by reason can 
never be false by revelation. And if God cannot be deceived 
himself, or be willing to deceive men, the light he has given 
to distinguish between religious truth and falsehood cannot, 
if duly attended to, deceive them in things of so great moment. 
They who do not allow reason to judge in matters of opinion 



INTRODUCTION. Tl 

or speculation are guilty of as great absurdity as the Papists 
who will not allow the senses to be judges in the case of trans- 
substantiation — though a matter directly under their cognizance 
— nay, the absurdity, I think, is greater in the first case, 
because reason is to judge whether our senses are to be de- 
ceived. And if no texts ought to be admitted as a proof in 
a matter contrary to sense, they ought certainly as little to be 
admitted in any point contrary to reason. In a word, to sup- 
pose anything in revelation inconsistent with reason, and at the 
same time pretended to be the will of God, is not only to 
destroy that proof on which we concluded it to be the will of 
God — but even the proof of the being of a God — since if our 
reasoning faculties duly attended to, can deceive us, we cannot 
be sure of the proof of any one proposition, but everything 
would be alike uncertain, and we should forever fluctuate in a 
state of universal scepticism. 

We must suppose that there have been many things intro- 
duced into the Bible that are not the clear and demonstrative 
words of God, when Dr. South says that " it is a mysterious 
and extraordinary book, which perhaps the more it is studied 
the less it is understood — as generally — finding a man cracked 
or making himself so." 

Another writer says: "That had not the Mahomedan 
Divines had the knack of allegorizing nonsense, fools and frantic 
persons would not have been held in such honor and reverence 
amongst the Mussulmen, only because their revelations and 
enthusiasms transported them out of the ordinary temper of 
humanity." Therefore, upon the whole, I must needs say, 
happy is the man who is so far at least directed by the law of 
reason, and the religion of nature, as to suffer no mysteries or 
unintelligible propositions, no allegories or hyperbolees, no me- 
taphors, types, parables, or phrases of an uncertain signification 
to confound his understanding. And certainly the common 
parent of mankind is too good and gracious to put the happi- 
ness of all his children on any other doctrines than such as 



•72 INTRODUCTION. 

plainly show themselves to be the will of God — even to the 
ignorant and illiterate, if they have but courage and honesty 
to make use of their reason — otherwise the scripture would not 
be plain in all necessary things — even to babes and sucklings. 

The same writer goes on to say that ''it is not enough to 
be certain that the scripture writers were not imposed upon, 
but we must be certain they would not, on any occasion what-' 
ever, impose on others; or in other words, were not men of like 
passions and infirmities with other mortals. Does not the 
scripture give very many instances of inspired persons as much 
governed by their passions as uninspired ? Was not Abraham, 
though a prophet and so dear to God that he would not destroy 
a neighboring town without acquainting him with it, guilty of 
an incestous marriage, his wife being his sister by the father's 
side ? And did he not betray her chastity to two kings in 
disowning her to be his wife ? By which conduct he got from 
one of them, who entertained him well for her sake, men and 
maid servants, sheep, oxen, asses, and camels; and from the 
other a thousand pieces of silver, besides sheep, oxen, men and 
women servants, and immediately after his faith was accounted 
to him for righteousness. Did he not doubt of God's promise 
till God spoke to him in a deep sleep ? 

Was not David, though a prophet and a man after God's 
own heart, guilty of many enormous crimes ? from the time he 
designed to have murdered all the males in Nabal's family, be- 
cause he would not pay contributions to him, and those men who, 
out of debt, discontent and distress joined him, though Nabal, 
by so doing, might have incurred the fate of those priests from 
whom David, by several falsehoods, got both shew-bread and 
Goliah's sword. What could be more treacherous than his in- 
vading people, that were at least in peace, if not allies of the 
king of Gath, to whom he fled for safety, and having neither 
saved man nor woman alive to bring tidings, told his generous 
protector he had been making an inroad into Judea ? 

In a word, not to mention his treatment of Uriah, and the 



INTRODUCTION. t3 

debauching of his wife, which no brave man can think of with- 
out horror, did he not leave the world in a very unforgiving 
temper, when the last thing he commanded his son, Solomon, 
was to put Shemei to death, though he had sworn before the 
Lord that he would not put him to death, and that he should 
not die? 

Solomon, though inspired with wisdom from above and had 
conferences with God himself, yet his passion for women made 
him guilty of gross idolatry. And not to multiply instances, 
we find one man of God lying to another in the name of God, 
purely for the pleasure of making him eat bread and drink 
water with him. And if we go to the New Testament, it is 
plain by what our Savior says to those who had prophesied, 
and cast out devils, and done many wonderful works in his 
name — "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity" — that neither 
prophesies nor miracles are absolute securities for men to 
depend on. Nay, do we not find one of the apostles, though 
he with the rest had the power of doing miracles even to the 
raising of the dead, betraying his Master for the paltry sum 
of thirty pieces of silver, and the other apostles not only fled 
and deserted him, but the chief of them foreswore him as oft 
as he was asked about his being one of his followers, and he, 
as well as Barnabas, w^as afterwards guilty of a mean piece of 
dissimulation. And Paul and Barnabfs had such a sharp con- 
tention, though about a very indifferent matter, as to cause a 
separation. And even St. Paul says, the good I would do, I 
do not, but the evil which I would not do, that I do, but I see 
another law in my members warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is 
in my members. 

I could give a volume of quotations from Divines, them- 
selves, all to the one undeniable fact that the human family has 
been torn asunder and distracted by religion, and that doubts 
and divisions are daily on the increase, notwithstanding the 
amount of money and missions employed at home and abroad 



Y4 INTRODUCTION. 

in the cause. And farther, that the name of religion has be- 
come, if not a reproach, at least of noneffect, for, as we have 
already quoted from a pious prelate. Dr. Scott, " when we have 
to do with a man, though he may bear the name of being 
religious, we are sure to ask whether he is an honest and good 
man ; but, on the contrary, if he comes with the name of being 
by nature an honest and good man, we never ask the other 
question, whether he is religious ?'' No greater reproach could 
be put upon religion than is daily exhibited by the most ob- 
Berving men in their doubts of the profession, when it is to 
be twisted in business transactions, and yet how little do we 
observe the fact, or philosophically infer from it what is to be 
the ultimate and melancholy result. These are facts, de- 
grading facts, that no honest man, in the community will dare 
deny, and can it then be that religion in itself tends to make 
men hyppocrites and swindlers or fanatics and cruel persecutors 
of their brethren ? Or, is it possible that God has given a 
guide to mislead us, or a law, the violation of which is to be 
our eternal damnation, and yet that he has withheld from us 
the capacity to understand it ? As the book now stands, it is 
not the book of salvation, but the book of damnation ; for, ac- 
cording to the preachings of the Clergy themselves, in their 
condemnation of their distracted and warring parties, they send 
nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand to hell. These 
glaring and startling facts should be solemnly looked into by 
every man who feels for his fellow-man, and for the harmony 
and happiness of society. 

The references given of the human frailties of scriptural 
writers, and even the Apostles and Disciples themselves, having 
acted with great ingratitude and faithless duplicity to their 
Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, should be ample in proof that 
they were not all the time inspired, and that they were neither 
impeccable nor infallible, but subject like other men to err, and 
consequently that he who may deny the fact, sins against sacred 
truth and against reason and the light of nature. I must here 



INTRODUCTION. 75 

introduce another quotation, from Mr. Chandler, one of the 
great advocates for the Christian religion : He says, "that na- 
tural religion is the only foundation upon which revelation can 
be supported, and which must be understood before any man 
is capable of judging either of the nature or evidence of 
Christianity ; and I am persuaded," says he, " that it is to the 
want of a due knowledge of the first principles of all religion, 
those mistakes about the Christian are owing — that have 
obscured the simplicity of it, and prejudiced many against 
entertaining and believing it." If natural religion is not part 
of the religion of Christ, it is scarce worth while to enquu'e at 
all what his religion is. If it be, then, the preaching of natural 
religion is preaching Christ, The religion of Christ must be 
understood before it can or ought to be believed, and that it 
must be proven to be a consistent and rational religion before 
they can be under any obligation to receive it. 

And, indeed, why should not every man insist upon those 
things ? The only consequence, that I can imagine can flow 
from it, is not that the cause of Christianity will suffer, which 
will stand the test of the most impartial enquiry, but that the 
rigid directors of the faith and consciences of men will loose 
their authority, and human schemes and creeds that have been 
set up in the room of Christianity, will fall into the contempt 
they so justly deserve. It is my hearty prayer to the Father 
of lights and the God of truth that all human authority in 
matters of faith may come to a full end, and that every one 
who hath reason to direct him and a soul to save, may be his 
own judge in every thing that concerns his eternal welfare, 
without any prevailing regard to the dictates of fallible men 
or fear of their peevish and impotent censures. We also give 
you what the reverend and judicious Mr. Bullock says : " A 
revelation coming from God, unless it be known to be such, is 
in effect the same as having none at all. Shall a man embrace 
the first religion that offers itself to him and without seeking 
any farther stick close to the principles of his education, if 



lf6 INTRODUCTION. 

this were safe, then all the contradictory notions that are in 
the world, would be equally safe and true, and there would be 
no such thing as a false religion or the spirit of error anywhere. 
But this will not be admitted. Is truth, then, confined to any 
certain country or to any particular set of men ? No ; but, if 
it were, still there would remain this difficulty to be assured to 
what country or to what sort of men it belonged. If this were 
all the rule we had to go by, every man, no doubt, would be 
partial to his own country, and those men he is best acquainted 
with. And so the principles of education must prevail every- 
where, instead of true religion. We are well assured that God 
is the author of our beings and all our faculties, and we cannot 
but acknowledge that our understanding is the most excellent 
faculty he has given us. It is in that we excel the beasts 
that perish, and it was plainly given us with this intent that 
by a due use and application thereof, we might discern truth 
from error, that which is just and fit to be done or observed by 
us from that which is not. Should we, therefore, admit any- 
thing as a revelation coming from him which contradicts the 
evident dictates of our reason, we sacrifice one revelation, that 
which God gave us with our very beings to make way for 
another, which is inconsistent with it. It is in effect admitting 
that the judgment of our own minds is in no case to be de- 
pended upon ; that the faculties, thereof, the very best gift 
which God has given us, are of no use or service to us ; no, 
not even in discerning which doctrines come from God and 
which do not." 

Let us hear what another able writer says in regard to the 
fallibility of the Bible writers : "There are innumerable texts 
which in the plainest manner words can express, impute human 
parts, human infirmities and human passions, even of the worst 
kind, to God. Does not this suppose'that even all have a right 
to examine, and consequently sufficient understanding to judge 
when texts taken in their plain, obvious meaning are, or are 
not consistent with what the light of nature teaches them the 



INTRODUCTION. *l*l 

character of the supreme being. What notions must the vulgar 
have of God, if the hght of nature cannot direct them right, 
when they find he is said to be jealous and furious. And God 
himself says : " My fury shall come up in my face, for, in my 
jealousy, and in the fire of my wrath, have I spoken," with a 
number of other expressions of a like nature. Nay, does not 
the scripture, if taken literally, suppose that God does things 
of the greatest moment in anger and fury? Was it not 
thus he gave his favored people statutes which were not good 
and judgments by which they could not live ? And does not 
St. Peter, (to mention no other Apostle) though a Jew, call 
the Jewish law given by God, " a yoke that neither we nor our 
forefathers could bear ?" In what a number of places is God 
said to do things to try people, and yet, notwithstanding this 
caution, how often is he said to repent ? Does he not even 
repent of the first action he did in relation to man ? He 
repented that he made man, and it grieved him at his 
heart!" Nay, does not the Scripture suppose he has so often 
repented that he is weary of repenting? What strange notions 
must the bulk of mankind, could not their reason dh'ect them 
right, have of the Supreme Being, when he is said to have 
rested and to be refreshed. And that "wine cheereth both 
God and man." And wbat is yet stranger, such actions are 
attributed to him as can only belong to the lowest rank of 
creatures, such as hissing. God being in three places of the 
prophets said to hiss, and in one place to " hiss for a fly, that 
is in the uttermost parts of the river of Egypt, and for a bee 
that is in the land of Assyria." 

These quotations may seem wearisome to the reader, but I 
have introduced them to show the necessity of a discriminating 
judgment in things involving our duty to God, and that ap- 
pertain to our own salvation. Reason is an unquestionable 
revelation of God to man, and with it he has a standing 
miracle in his own constitution and marvellous connection of 
mind and body over which God has placed reason, his best 



T8 INTRODUCTION. 

gift, as its only guide and protector, and we assuredly sin 
against both God and reason, when we suffer God's unraistaken 
revelation to be brought into captivity by mysticisms and mum- 
meries or any system of belief, that does not bear equal proof 
of its being also of God. 

Here are things, reader, that are neither reasonable nor 
can be by the authority of God : "I saw," says the prophet, 
Michaiah, " the Lord sitting upon his throne and all the host 
of heaven, standing on his right hand and on his left. And 
the Lord said : " Who shall entice Ahah, King of Israel, that 
he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead ?" " And one spake, 
saying after this manner, and another spake saying after that 
manner." Then there came out a spirit and stood before the 
Lord and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, 
wherewith ? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in 
the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, thou shalt 
entice him and thou also shalt prevail. Go out and do even so." 

Are there not examples in Scripture which, when taken in 
their literal sense, seem to make God break in upon the com- 
mon course of nature and the ordinary rules of his providence, 
to punish men for crimes they are not guilty of? as God's 
cauvsing in the latter end. of David's reign, a famine for three 
years, together for the crime of Saul and his bloody house in 
slaying the Gibeanites, and that God smote Israel and de- 
stroyed seventy thousand of them for David's fault, in causing 
the innocent sheep as he justly calls them, to be numbered." 
But again : " Can God change his mind, and suddenly, too !" 
Yet it is said, " God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem, 
meanwhile the Lord beheld and repented him of the evd." 

Again, as Grotius says, " That as Curtius observed of 
old, the multitude, ensnared by superstition, are more apt to 
be governed by their priests than princes, and that the kings 
and emperors have learned this at their cost, insomuch that 
to produce examples of this kind, would in a manner, be to 
transcribe the history of all nations." And farther, as St. 



INTRODUCTION-. T9 

Jerome, a great luminary of the Catholic Chm'ch, says : " A 
false interpretation of the Gospel of Christ may make it become 
the Gospel of men. Nay, which is worse, of devils ; how can 
they, who, not understanding the original, must trust to the in- 
terpretation of others, be certain, had they not a sufficient in- 
ward light to direct them, what doctrines are from God, what 
from men, and what from devils." 

Bishop Taylor quotes Osiander for saying, " There are 
twenty several opinions concerning justification, all drawn 
from the Scriptures by the men only of the Augustine Con- 
fession, and there are sixteen severalopinions concerning 
original sin, and as many distinctions of the sacraments as there 
are sects of men that disagree about them." Though there are 
so many various readings, yet does not that great critic. Dr. 
Bentley, in his proposal for printing by subscription a new 
edition of the New Testament, assure the world " That out of a 
labyrinth of thirty thousand various readings, which crowd the 
pages of our present best editions, all put upon an equal credit, 
to the offense of many good persons, that his clue, as he calls 
it, so leads and extricates us that there will be scarce two hun- 
dred out of so many thousands that can deserve the least consi- 
deration." Again, Mr. Whiston, in speaking of restoriLg the 
text of the Old Testament, says, ,'that it has been greatly cor- 
rupted, both in the Hebrew and Septuagent by the Jews to 
make the reasonings of the Apostles from the Old Testament 
inconclusive and ridiculous." Listen farther to the case of 
Abimelech, who, upon both Abraham and Sarah's lying to him, 
took Sarah, as the- Lord himself owns, in the integrity of his 
heart, and though he sent her back untouched, and gave consi- 
derable presents to both wife and husband, yet neither he nor 
his were to be pardoned, till Abraham, the offending person, 
being a prophet, was to pray for him. So Abraham prayed 
unto God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife, and maid- 
servants, and they bare children. And yet this holy pro- 
phet was soon after guilty of a very barbarous action in send- 



80 INTRODUCTION. 

ing out Hagar, whom Sarah had given him to wife and his own 
son, Ishmael, to perish in the wilderness." In closing mj refer- 
ences to authorities, I give that of Mr. Gregory, of Oxford, 
who says in his preface to some critical notes on the Scriptures, 
that he published, " There is no author, whatsoever, that has 
suffered so much from the hand of time as the Bible has." 

No advantage can ever be taken of the plain and simple 
word of God, to bring men into a slavish obedience to the 
craft and cunning of the priesthood, and this is the reason that 
the Clergy have so pertinaciously held to the allegorical and 
enigmatical mysticisms of the Bible, by which they gain so much 
pelf and power from deep and mystic learning. And hence the 
mystic rites and homs-jpocus tricks that have robbed the cre- 
dulous and gaping masses of their hard earnings. It is against 
such venal craft and debasing practices in the Church of God 
that I have entered the sacred arena against these hydra-headed 
monsters, but such is the incorrigible and deplorable credulity 
of man, that I have but little hope of success. Of this, how, 
ever, I am well assured, that the substantial and intrinsic worth 
of the Bible, must soon be rid of its grievous and disgraceful 
incumbrances, and the people of their ecclesiastical tyranny and 
taxation, or the Christian world is doomed to undergo a speedy 
revolution and the Mormon movement may now prove the en- 
tering wedge. Since the great heresy of Luther, (so called^ 
there have been ten thousand dissentions and heresies, till the 
Christian Church is in a perfect state of anarchy, which must, 
(judging from the past history of man,) bring it under the do- 
minion of some new imposter or great leader, as it did in past 
ages under the Pope of Home. Those who can observe, have 
often observed what countenance it will give to an unworthy 
man to be introduced in company with a great and good man, 
and we even entertain the lowest of wretches rather than offend 
a friend with whom they may be connected, and by the aid of 
this trait in the character of man do thousands desecrate the 
pulpit and the sacred name of religion, yes, and even invade 



INTRODUCTION. 81 

the chastity of their otherwise virtuous and spotless sisters. 
The blackest crimes that ever disgraced God's earth have been 
committed under the cloak of religion and in his holy name. 
The same powerful association in the mind of man, has given 
tolerance to the many intolerable and incredible things of the 
Bible, because grafted upon those known to be inherently holy. 
For instance, it would not be possible for a moral and decent 
community to beUeve that a virtuous woman could sell her 
<3hastity for money, or that an honorable husband w^ould bring 
it about by the most debasing falsehoods, were not such acts 
associated with sacred things. 

And again, is it the lofty language of the God of heaven, 
or the lowest obscenity of man, to say, when quarrelmg with a 
woman, that he will hoist her coats, and expose her secrets, or 
that he will exhibit his back-side instead of his face ? The 
man who will say this is the language and conduct of the great 
God of the Universe, is a slanderer, and must forfeit all claim 
to the mercy which he may ask of the offended Deity. These 
are little mistakes, it is true, and have nothing to do with the 
substantial merits of the Bible, yet they are mistakes, and mis- 
takes that create doubts and disrespect for the entire book, and 
consequently should be omitted as of no practical utility, what- 
ever, either in the faith, or in the practice of its holy precepts. 
Can it be that God directed the Jews to steal or borrow with- 
out the intention to return, and instructed them to falsify as to 
the object of their journey, or is it a mistake ? Moreover, to 
take up a notorious harlot as Rahab, and entice her to lie and 
betray her country into the hands of its most cruel enemies, 
and after these acts of immorality and base perfidy that shocks 
all civilized nations, to make her a favorite and bless her, is a 
bad example to society, and appears to me more hke a work 
of the devil than that of a just and holy God. But, not to 
dwell longer, what has religion to do with onanism, the drun- 
kenness and incest of Noah — of Judah's incest or the Lord's 

entering a petty battle with the strife of men, and ^'throwing 

4* 



82 INTRODUCTION. 

down great stones from heaven^^ upon the poor Ammonites — of 
Jacob's cheating his brother Esau, and the many, many other 
mistakes that should not be found in a book which is to claim 
our confidence and respect, and that is to be an example of 
moral perfection and godly piety. 

All who have any regard for the character of the heavenly 
benefactor, or hope for their own salvation, must grant his un- 
deviating and eternal purpose of kindness, honor, and justice, 
and consequently that he cannot be the author of anything in- 
consistent with these immutable attributes. We are puzzled 
then to know w^hat God, that is who butchers innocent and un- 
offending women and suckling babes — who hardens the hearts 
of men — then winks at their wickedness — and, after all, boldly, 
in defiance of justice, love and mercy, declares himself to be a 
partial, jealous, arbitrary, and unjust God, who, having the 
power over man that the potter has over his clay, will shape 
him in his merciless wrath, regardless of the meritorious and 
sacred rights of his oum children. It is a marvellously strange 
notion that our numberless little Divines entertain in regard to 
the claims of God and his right to enforce them. 

God did not create himself, as, to do so, would be to act 
when he was not and where he was not, and to bring himself 
into existence before he had an existence. He consequently is 
held to be self-existent from all eternity, and that his attributes 
inhere in him as an inseparable and component part of his 
nature. He, therefore, is under the necessity (as say Chalmers, 
Clark, Edwards, Dick, and other able Divines) of acting in 
accordance with these attributes, or, in other words, his nature, 
and that he has no power to act otherwise. This fact requires 
no authority, but reason to make it clear to the mind of every 
man who will exercise his own attributes that God has given 
him to know himself, and the relation he bears to his Creator. 
These divine attributes of God are wisdom, power, mercy, and 
goodness. If God, therefore, could make himself impotent or 
powerless, he would not be the mighty God. Were he to act 



INTRODUCTION. 83 

foolishly, he could not be a wise God, and in like manner, were 
he to act arbitrarily or unjustly, he could not be an impartial 
and just God. These facts, as little as they are considered and 
understood, are axiomatic and essential to a clear knowledge 
of God and of the dispensations of Providence. A wise and 
just God has no more power to act foolishly and unjustly than 
a man has to be a wise and honest man, and a fool and a 
rogue at the same time. It will at once be seen, then, that 
those foolish and unjust acts attributed to God in the Bible, 
simply because of his power, are wholly incompatible with the 
constitution and nature of things, and as impossible as to be 
and not to be at the same time. For though his attribute of 
power is supreme, yet he has the attributes of mercy and 
justice, which would be neutralized by the exercise of that 
power, and consequently leave him without the attributes 
necessary for a God. God, being immutable and always the 
same, cannot, like man, vascillate, so that throughout all time 
and in every act he is equally powerful, just and good. How 
is it possible, then, that any man who believes in the great God 
of the Universe, can think that he would, even had he power 
to lay aside his nature, condescend to embroil himself in the 
little petty passions and strifes of men, who are at best but 
vain bubbles on the stream of time, that rise and sink, and are 
gone for ever? 

If man were actuated by wisdom and virtue, we should have 
no such dirty records of God, nor would governments be over- 
thrown, and the human family torn to pieces by feuds and 
fiendish strifes. To have those impartial, exalted, and just 
views of God which I aim to teach, we cannot get them from 
the distracted and contradictory doctrines of men, but we must 
look to the light of nature and the mighty works he has spread 
around us. Our own systems are living, walking, and thinking 
miracles of his marvellous wisdom, and continual goodness, not 
to look into the starry heavens, where countless worlds revolve 
in trackless and interminable space through endless time. The 



84 INTRODUCTION. 

little, petty, local, and meddling Gods of the Jews, as by error 
recorded, were like the debauched, debased, and faithless 
deities of Greece and Rome, against whom the divine Socrates 
rebelled, and for which he was put to death — my fate for the 
same abhorrence of foul slander against the great God of 
heaven, I hope, may not be the same. 

Everything has its nature that makes it what it is, and to 
alter or take any portion from it, leaves it not the same — for 
as the whole is greater than its parts, and is made what it is 
by its parts or qualities, any portion or property taken from 
that whole, leaves it not what it was. This is a universal 
principle running throughout all creation, both in the animate 
and the inanimate kingdoms, and in the moral and physical 
dependencies of God's inviolate purpose. Gold, for instance, 
is what it is by its inherent or component parts, as solidity, 
weight, and color — and to take from it any one of those quali- 
ties, it is no longer gold, and, in like manner, every tree of the 
forest has its specific properties which make it what it is, and 
distinguish it from all others. God, then, being what he is, 
from all eternity and through all eternity in power and pur- 
pose, he cannot rob himself of his own holy attributes and 
inherent nature, nor has he the power to remain this identical 
God and yet rob man of his inherent, immutable, and eternal 
rights. 

Truth, honor and justice are universal principles paramount 
to even power itself, and as undying and unalterable as God 
himself, and belong to just men in common with God, and 
therefore it is, that God is under the necessity of recognizing 
and holding inviolate this inherent and holy gift of heaven to 
man. Destroy truth, honor, and justice, and God himself, with 
the universe of morals, mind and matter, would sink into one 
undistinguishable vortex of ruin and desolation. But as these 
principles will be philosophically discussed elsewhere, I will go 
on with the outlines of my book, to wit : " The nature and 
government of man from his cradle to his grave." 



/ 



INTRODUCTION, 85 

It is from the angry and disgraceful quibblings upon those 
unimportant points and mistakes of the Bible, to the utter 
neglect of practical piety that many have doubted the truth of 
religion, and others, whether if true, it can be of any value to 
society. Theological enigmas and cold formulae involving 
creeds, cannons, with irreverent and arrogant dogmatisms have 
become the order of the day to the utter neglect of meekness, 
humility, brotherly love and forgiveness. The repenting in 
sack-cloth and ashes and the simple and unpretending piety of the 
early Christians is not to be found. These things with the pre- 
tended uispirational and canonical infallibility of every word in 
the Bible, has been the bane of religion. That the Bible is an 
inspired book, is not doubted, but that every expression therein 
with its multiferious figures, emblems, symboles, hyperboles, 
mistranslations and interpolations by uninspired men are to be 
taken as any portion of our faith, is extreme folly. Again, the 
haughty and assuming bigotry of Christian arbiters who profess 
to have monopolzed religion by the partial choice and open 
declaration of Almighty God, who, we had hoped, was our 
common Father, and would treat us all with an impartial love 
according to our respective merits, has horrified and discouraged 
many simple-hearted and honest people. Of all the delusions 
we think this the most arbitrary, unrighteous and degrading. 
It is an impious and awful libellous personality against the 
great Jehovah, who has so often declared that he is no 
respecter of persons, and that he gave his only begotten son to 
die for the redemption and salvation of the whole world, leaving 
but one possible question for decision, whether the Christian's 
God is one who falsifies and trifles with his children, or whether 
he is a God of truth and justice. 

We will here give a creed from the unraistaken word ol 
God, which, if adapted generally, will bring about a perfect 
brotherhood on earth. It requires no dead languages, no tech- 
nical formulae or metaphysical abstractions to be understood, 
and has but one objection, that of robbing the Clergy of their 



86 INTRODUCTION. 

mystic learning and party distinctions and of their pastoral 
salaries. Here it is, short and simple, unimprovable, unsur- 
passable and fitted to the language, capacity and condition of 
all men throughout the world : 

" Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou 
shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
neighbor. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Thou 
shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain. Not 
every one that saith unto me, ' Lord, Lord,^ but he that doth 
the will of my Father which is in heaven. By their perils ye 
shall know them. I will have mercy, and not sacrifice. Be 
not a slothful hearer only, but a doer of the word. Woe 
unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, for ye pay tithes, mint 
and anise cummin, and neglect the weightier matters of the 
law : justice, mercy and temperance. Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. Whatsoever ye would that men should 
do unto you, that do ye also unto them, for this is the Law 
and the Prophets. Love your enemies. Do good to them 
that hate you. Pray for them which despitefully use you and 
persecute you. Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that 
tresspass against us. I say not unto thee till seven times, but 
until seventy times seven. If ye love them only that love you. 
what reward have ye ? Do not even Publicans do the same ? 
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake. 
If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take 
up his cross and follow me. If thy right hand offend thee, cut 
it off and cast it from thee. No man having put his hand to 
the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. 
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. He 
that humbleth himself shall be exalted. He that is greatest 
amongst you, let him be your servant. Take heed that you 
do not your alms before men, to be seen of them. When thou 
prayest, enter into thy closet and shut the door — watch and 
pray. Yerily, verily, I say unto you: Whatsoever ye shall 
ask of the Father in my name, he will give it you ; ask and it 



INTRODUCTION. 8l 

shall be given you. Pure religion and undefiled before God and 
the Father is this : To visit the fatherless and the widows in 
their affliction, and keep yourself unspatted from the world. If 
ye love not your brother whom you have seen, how can you love 
God whom you have not seen. Piety without charity is nothing." 
Here are a few simple and sublime precepts ample for the 
salvation of the world, and which admit of no angry disputa- 
tions or uncharitable revilings amongst the followers of Christ. 
They explain themselves without the aid of clergy or creed- 
makers, and recommend themselves by their own intrinsic 
worth — yes — their own inherent divinity. They are the words 
and commands of God himself, and cannot be tampered with 
by the mystic mummeries of designing men. We here ask the 
reader, whether he has ever seriously meditated upon the fact 
that there is no practical difference between a sovereign law- 
giver, and a sovereign interpreter and prescriber of that law ? 
The interpretation of the law gives to man more control over 
the eternal destiny of his fellow-man, than God himself can 
exercise by that little of his law which may remain untampered 
with. In the above creed, which I have offered, is the pure 
undefiled Gospel according to God, and were there no other 
creed in Christendom, we should all be the spotless and loving 
children of God. But to the disgrace of humanity and the 
perdition of souls, we have the Gospel according to the Pope 
—the Gospel according to Calvin — the Gospel according to 
"Wesley — the Gospel according to the world-destroyer and 
fool-maker Miller — the Gospel according to Campbell — the 
Gospel according to mother Ann Lee, and the Gospel ac- 
cording to Joe Smith. These, with a thousand more petty 
gospels or creeds have distracted and demoralized the world, 
and raised up in the name of religion fiery fiends and demons of 
destruction, to whose foaming fury and blighting breath were, 
under the Inquisition, as fearful as the blue flames that are 
breathed from the black jaws of perdition. These gospels 
according to man have been the giant Upas of earth. 



88 INTRODUCTION. 

We know that arrogant and assuming bigots whose cold 
and hollow hearts are cased in iron, and cannot feel for 
* other's woes/ are intolerant to free grace, and are jealous of 
every sentiment that will free the soul from inquisitorial or 
clerical dominion; and well may those forced Christians whose 
hearts are hard, but whose election is sure for heaven, look 
down with scowling contempt upon the poor benighted children 
of God, whose pious struggles and humble faith are vainly 
founded in the hope of heaven's eternal justice. Language 
cannot be too strong against this most rebellious, irreverent, 
and fearful misrule against the will of God and the freedom 
of man. Such professors may well agree with the " Calvinist 
peasant" in Bulwer's Eugene Aram, who considered "that 
the choicest bliss of heaven would be to look down into that 
other place, and see the folks grill." Tertullian, Gibbon, and 
Baxter's " Saint's Rest" relate similar cases of a fiendish feeling 
of the hearts of our fellow-creatures. We but ask of the honest 
professor to look around him and see whether ninety-nine in 
every hundred of church-members are not governed in their 
faith by the articles originally drawn up by man, whose for- 
mulae are prescribed by the pastor of their church ? 

The reason why I have dwelt more largely upon the abuses 
of church than of state, is that we are by nature religious 
creatures, and that our lives for good and for evil are 
governed by this main-spring of human action. The clergy 
who profess to be the representatives of God and the guar- 
dians of religion, hold firm grasp upon this secret spring or 
chord of the heart, and wield it to their own views, and hence 
it is through their teachings and the influence of the church, 
that the moral, political, and social frame of society is formed. 
We hold that the standard of morality, of religion, and of 
social happiness in a community will depend upon the correct- 
ness of knowledge which the leaders of that community may 
have of God and his attributes, and of man and his constitu- 
tion of mind and body, and of the relation which man sustains 



INTROnUCTION. 89 

to his God and to his fellow-man. If we worship an exalted 
God of honor, love, truth, and justice, a like tone of feeling 
will possess the soul. But if, on the contrary, we aim to fol- 
low the example of a grovelling, jealous, malicious, vindictive, 
and partial God, the standard of truth, honor, and justice 
will be low, indeed I So that it will be seen that the harmony 
and happiness of man will depend upon the views which he 
may have of a ruling God and of the dispensations of Provi- 
dence. All, then, who acknowledge God, must agree that 
the only rational means of harmonizing in the worship of that 
God will be to make ourselves as clearly as possible acquainted 
with his fixed, immutable, and eternal laws, in which there 
can be no dispute from the misconstruction of language, that 
leads to hard thoughts and unhallowed bickerings in the 
church of God. 

And from this granted category, all will farther agree that 
the most of our lives are spent in the study of dead languages 
and mystic dogmatisms that will never bring us to harmonize 
as a family, but leave us to grovel as heretofore in our blind 
and bloody struggles. In proof of this, notwithstanding the 
millions of money that have been spent, and the many minds 
that have been exhausted in the cause of religion for eighteen- 
hundred and fifty-nine years, man has been left in doubt and 
distraction, and the divisions of the church made wider and 
wilder. It is well known that the Greeks and Romans wor- 
shipped at the shrine of the most corrupt and degrading deities 
that have ever disgraced our earth — full of intrigues, open 
deba'ucheries, and bullying broils, and yet we have to spend 
the better portion of our lives in the study of their languages, 
for which we have no more use than we have ^r their religioa. 
Every youth, in order to obtain his honors at College, is com- 
pelled to study these languages together with the smattering 
of a few other sluggish and jumbled studies that are doggedly 
drilled into his head as into the learned pig. And, thus, with 
the wings of his intellect clipped, does he go into a theological 



90 INTRODUCTION". 

department again to go through a mechanical course of pre- 
scribed isms and dogmatisms, to fit him for the church of which 
he is to become a pastor. And, thus, he comes out with a 
heart case-hardened to all other creeds, and a mind revolving 
in a nutshell which better fits him for the intolerant bigotry 
of an inquisition than for the ruler of an enlightened com- 
munity. We say, a heart case-hardened, but surely not from 
crime committed, or evil intended, nor is he to be blamed, but 
pitied ; for he, like the galley-slave, performs his prescribed 
duties, and, like a rail-road car, tracks closely after his leader, 
and deserves equal credit for his dutiful performance. His is 
an education of words, and not of principles and things — he 
has pedantry, but not learning — he has words without mean- 
ing, and distinctions without difference, and here, perfectly to 
the point, we make an extract from one of the most distin- 
guished Protestant Divines of America, Dr. Parker : "Look 
at the Catholics of the United States in comparison with the 
Protestants. In the whole of America, there is not a single 
man born and b'ed a Catholic, distinguished for any thing, 
but his devotion to the Catholic church. I mean to say, there 
is not a man in America, born and bred a Catholic who has 
any distinction in litei'ature, science, politics, benevolence, or 
philanthropy. I do not know one. I never heard of a great 
philosopher, naturalist, historian, orator, or poet among them ; 
the Jesuits have been in existence three hundred years : they 
have had their pick of the choicest intellect of all Europe — 
they never take a common man wh n they know it, they sub- 
ject every pupil to a severe ordeal, intellectual and physical, 
as well as moral, in order to ascertain whether he has the 
requisite stuff in him to make a strong Jesuit out of. They 
have a scheme of education masterly in its way. But there 
has not been a single great man produced in the company of 
the Jesuits from 1845 to 1854. They absorb talent enough, 
but they strangle it. Clipped oaks never grow large. Prune 
the roots of a tree with a spade, prune the branches close to 



INTRODUCTION. 



91 



the bole, what becomes of the tree ? The bole itself remains 
thin, and scant, and slender. Can a man be a conventional 
dwarf, and a giant at the same time ? Case your little boys' 
limbs in metal, would they grow? Plant a chestnut in a tea- 
cup, do you get a tree ? Not a shrub, even. Put a priest, 
or a priest's creed, as the only soil for a man to grow in, he 
grows not. The great God provided the natural mode of 
operation — do you suppose he will turn aside and mend or 
mar the universe at your or my request ? I think, God will 
do no such thing." 

This learned critic might have said the same, not of himself, 
butj of all others blinded by a one-idea and one-sided prejudice 
in religion ; nor can the comparison be withheld from the entire 
system of education now in use throughout the world. The 
physician is no better off, for though he obtains a pittance 
more of science before he takes his license to butcher for him- 
self, his soul has not been sufiBciently elevated, and his mind 
enlisted in the sublime works of God to pursue it with that 
ardor and energy that would make him a man of science and 
a safe physician. His sheep-skin gives him but little more 
knowledge than the undressed hide did its original owner. 
He comes out most pedantically, however, filled with dead 
languages, and confounding technicalities which, though they 
will not heal, cover his ignorance and give great consolation 
to his credulous and dying patients, when told they are pass- 
ing off under abnormal influences. He, though in reality, but 
a novice in science, is satisfied with the honors of his college, 
and falling into the luxurious and reckless habits of the age, 
sinks to indolence and insignificance. The lawyer, issuing from 
the same institutions with less science, but mere sordid syco- 
phancy, becomes the whole-hog demagogue and ruler of the 
people; and thus must society suffer as long as the human 
mind is manacled and incarcerated by an arbitrary and tyran- 
nical rule of conventionality entailed upon us from the dark 



92 INTRODUCTION. 

We have long been of the opinion that if the dead languages 
and others of the dull routine of studies that now absorb the 
better part of our early life and stamp our future character, 
were cast off and science instituted in their place, that the 
prosperity and happiness of our race would be greatly en- 
hanced. It will require but little reflexion to convince every 
man that dead languages never have, and in the nature of 
things, never can give us a single idea of science, of principle 
or of anything practical in life. There has not been a dis- 
covery in science or improvement in art with which Latin and 
Greek had anything to do ; our own living languages being 
more than ample to make known every thought that may arise 
in the mind. And magnetism, gravitation, geology, astronomy, 
botany, and the thousand branches of science have as little to 
do with such dumb and senseless things. The steamboat, rail- 
car and other mighty improvements are not pillowed upon 
dead languages. They are from the minds of men of thought, 
and not of words. They are founded in the language and law 
of God, not to be found in any other language, and not to be 
governed by any arbitrary rule. These laws are immutable 
and eternal, and not to be tortured and tampered with as has 
been his paper book by lingual upstarts. The language in his 
book of nature is suited to all ages and nations, and shining 
so in the light of heaven, that " he who runs may read." God 
has so constituted the human mind, that it form its earliest 
perceptions, seeks him through his works ; and if not stultified 
and dwarfed by scholastic foruuilae, would soar high into his 
celestial spheres with wonder and delight, scanning with the 
eye of science those potent agencies that operate from day to 
day upon our sensitive being for woe or for weal, and of 
which the grovelling linguist would remain forever ignorant. 

The child from its earliest lispings will ask who made the 
trees, the flowers, the streams, and pleasing objects spread 
around them, and would, if early placed in a school of science, 
under teachers of elevated and human minds, soon acquire 



INTRODUCTION. 93 

more knowledge of the phenomena of nature than is obtained 
by the present graduates of universities. It has been objected 
that we can store up in our little craniums those useless lan- 
guages, and much more rubbish, and yet have room for all 
that can be known. Poor dunces ! how little do they know 
of God and his wonderous works ! A few brief hours are our 
allotted existence, and oh, how little, little, little are our vain 
minds, while endless space and ceaseless time are but the 
measure of God Almighty's works ! Startling, yes, startling, 
strange is it to our reflections that the world should still be 
floundering in mud and mire, while the pure fountains are 
gushing from their source in nature, and the stars are smiling 
down upon us and inviting our attention upwards. It must 
be that we have not yet extricated ourselves from the mists 
and mould of the dark ages that have been hallowed by time, 
and stereotyped upon the minds of dullards as the ultimatum 
of human investigation. Dead languages being best suited to 
dry, horse minds, and such minds constituting what are called 
learned men, and they have an interest in sustaining the 
sovereignty of such trifles, it is not surprising that they should 
have been selected as teachers in our institutions and the 
trainers of youthful mind through successive ages. 

This subject is beginning to be noticed by the best writers of 
the age, amongst whom is Sir William Hamilton, professor of 
metaphysical philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and 
who has been styled by the literati of Europe, "the walking 
Encyclopedia." In his total and decided condemnation of 
mathematics, particularly, as not only worthless, but injurious 
to the mind," quotes the authority of the greatest men of any 
age, and particularly the heads of the universities of Germany 
and Prussia, who are professors of these very branches. The 
language used in the exclusion of these studies by the various 
writers, is that ''they cramp our intellectual life ;" they freze 
the soul" — " the powers of thought are tied down to formal 
and dull precision and the detail of facts ; they are one-sided 



94 INTRODUCTION. 

and contracted ; they only dry up and chill the mind and are 
worse than useless ; they give no exercise to the higher 
powers ; they stupify the mind and check the flight of genius." 
Many such expressions are used upon this subject. See Sir 
William Hamilton upon " University Reform." We will 
quote but a single passage from Sir William's long and able 
argument against the study of mathematics : " From this 
general contrast, it will easily be seen how in an excessive 
study of mathematical sciences, not only does it not prepare, 
but absolutely incapacitates the mind for those intellectual 
energies which philosophy and life require. We are thus dis- 
qualified for observation, either internally or externally, for 
abstraction and generalization, and for common reasoning — 
nay, disposed to the alternative of blind credulity or irrational 
scepticism. 

Mathematics afford us no assistance, either in conquering 
the difficulties or in avoiding the dangers which we encounter 
in the great field of probabilities, wherein we live and move. 
We will here introduce what the miracle of universal genius 
says — Paschal : *' There is," says he, " a great difference be- 
tween the spirit of mathematics and the spirit of observation." 
And again: "It is rare that mathematicians are observant, 
or that observant men are mathematicians." 

The efforts of these great men for reform in the universities 
of Europe have mostly been to throw off the mathematical 
branches as not only useless, but injurious in the development 
of mind. It may, in our opinion, be said with equal propriety 
that dead languages, logic and rhetoric may all be thrown 
out from the high and intellectual schools that we propose, as 
tyrannical and degenerating to the natural excellence Ind 
aspiring powers of the soul. They allow of no exercise of 
thought, nor expansion of mind. They are so because they 
are so, staid and stale localities admitting of no alteration, 
no enlargement, flat truisms, low and selfish, ofl*ering us no 
aid iu the exigencies of life and the ills to which we are ex- 



INTRODUCTION. 95 

posed, are neither moral nor social, nor do they give ns any 
idea of a God or of man and his own constitution. They do 
not exercise our high and rational powers, nor can they lead 
the soul beyond the pale of their own servile and arbitrary 
notions. They teach us nothing of religion or the laws of 
God and the rights of man. To science they are blind, nor 
have they an idea of a single phenomenon of the vast universe. 
They, like the dead languages, cannot invent, till the soil, heal 
a wound or provide for a single want of life. God has made the 
eye perfect and it needs no Latin, logic or rhetoric to adapt it 
to the light, nor does the native tongue require their aid. All 
our ideas come through our senses, and there is no man but 
that can make known to his fellows every valuable and practical 
thought which he may have. To tell a man in English that 
he has seen an animal with two legs, he will understand it just 
as well as to say in Latin, that be has seen a biped, and so 
with all other things. Thus, can we plainly and intelligibly 
speak without the rules of either Latin or rhetoric, and in 
regard to logic, it claims to originate nothing, but to shape 
things to fashion and to enable a speaker to confuse and con- 
found his adversary, but not to convince him. Of such artistic 
quibble and sophistry, we already have too much in the world, 
and as truth, the great attribute of God, condemns all alliance 
with such trickery and delusion, it certainly has no claim to 
the better portion of our lives. In short, these musty conven- 
tionalities have long been a grievous incubus upon the aspiring 
soul. They are parasitical and weighty excrescenses, which 
should be pruned. They are a nuisance and they should be 
abated. The unthinking reader may naturally ask why it is if 
these studies be as worthless as here reported, that they should 
have been so long retained? Our answer is : It is in the 
apathy and delusion of millions of our fellow-men, as in 
China and the Indies, where their fixed formulae have not been 
changed through the long lapse of ages they have claimed on earth. 
The mass of mankind are indolent and not disposed to think 



96 INTRODUCTION. 

for themselves, and consequently yield to the opinions and teach- 
ings of others. Besides, men whose minds are naturally dull 
and mechanical and tied down by education, will, through self- 
interest and often from honest conviction, enjoin the same upon 
others, and thus have those stupid and worthless things been 
entailed upon us and become hallowed by the lapse of time. 

We will here bring to view the vast field for observation 
that lies open before us and ojffer it as a substitute for those 
excluded branches of academic studies. The illustrated book 
of nature speaking in the unmistaken language of God, is ever 
open before us, and the interminable chain that binds the phy- 
sical intellectual, and moral world is to be examined link by 
link, while but few rounds of the ladder of truth that reaches 
from earth to heaven, have as yet been ascended. The whole 
phenomena of nature are presented to our view and her classifi- 
cation is simple, her nomenclature perfect. As the light of 
heaven is adapted with kindness to every eye, so is the language 
of nature to every tongue and capacity on earth. The outer 
eye requires no arbitrary learning nor does the inner eye of the 
mind ; it is but to open either and see for ourselves. The great 
enigma of the universe is yet to be solved, and we have, if un- 
tramelled, the capacity ample for the task. From the grand 
and colossal exhibitions of nature, we infer boundless power and 
infinite wisdom, and from the exquisite designs and adaptation 
of means to ends, we infer a designer. Through immensity, we 
launch into eternity, and in endless variety we find an eternal 
unity. Transcendent beauty, order and harmony fill all the 
departments of Go'd's vast domains, while vitality and thief t 
spring from every pore of nature. Search from old ocean's 
oozy bed to the concave heavens that span the whirling globe, 
and from the hidden caverns of earth to the star lit skies, and 
all is filled with life and activity. The glowing heavens, are 
filled with light, and the laws that rule the celestial orbs, while 
the waters beneath, team with organic being. Plenitude and 
power are seen everywhere, and the unmistaken presence of the 



INTRODUCTION-. 9t 

great Jehovah is made manifest to the most common observer. 
God's own hand-writing is seen upon the face of nature, leaving 
no room for subtle follies or verbal quibblings. No hie, hac^ 
hoes, or farther struggle between the rule of truth and the errors 
of education. Those glittering diadems that stud the mighty 
dome of heaven and the green earth, with its rolling rivers^ — its 
waving forests and blooming lawns are all sweet expositors of 
their maker's greatness and goodness. "The heavens declare 
the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth his handi- 
work, day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
showeth knowledge." The heart is no longer chilled by the 
stern and wrinkled brow of the technical pedagogue, but bounds 
with exulting rapture, while the emancipated soul bathing in 
the pure and sparkling fountains of nature, rises with renewed 
strength, Hke the noble eagle from his dirty cage, and soars 
high in heaven's unfathomable blue. No odious selfishness or 
fraudulent creeds can be found in God's natural revelation. No 
theological chnneras or sordid mummeries of a knavish priest- 
hood are there to be found. No confused relations of vague 
and complicated abstractions, conventionalities or factitious 
entities — no cheerless mystery or desponding gloom, but all is 
held out in bold and bright relief to the glowing light of day. 
The boon of heaven is there offered to the ransomed soul and 
the profound and lofty spirit of nature will guide it on and on. 
We have thus briefly striven to show the reader what we 
have yet to learn, and to restore the book of nature to the 
church of God, which book in the dark ages being pronounced 
heterodox with the artistic cannons of theological philosophy, 
was thrown out, and an absu^d and suicidal system of mystic 
philosophy ordained in its place. Of all the delusions this was 
the most contemptible. It dethroned God, degraded the human 
mind and dishonored religion and after the vast expenditure of 
mind and money during a lapse of eighteen hundred and fifty- 
nine years, the religious world is left in doubt and distraction. 
Under this delusion thousands of arrogant and pedantic bigots 

5 



98 INTRODUCTION. 

are turned out from the old clerical manufactories, who, with 
their bitter denunciations and uncharitable reviling, have en- 
gendered a wrangling bedlam, instead of" a harmonious and 
lovmg brotherhood on earth. 

This to a Bigot, whose mind is clogged with localities and 
specialities, and whose moss-grown soul vegetates in gloomy 
recesses, where the light of heaven is meagerly shed, looks like 
slander, but no honest and intelligent man can think so. Take 
this parasitical soul from its musty and rock-bound prison, and 
transplant it upon the lofty mountain's peak, where it can look 
out upon the bright and glowing scenes of nature that spread 
on and on far beyond its mortal vision, and it cannot longer 
doubt the supremacy of nature, and, with transporting ecstacy, 
will cry out: 

Eternal Being, whose might divine 

Ten thousand worlds obey, 
While fiery comets trackless blaze. 

And vary not their way! 
Through endless space and ceaseless time 

Those ponderous orbs are rolled, 
By the mighty arm upheld. 

And by the power controlled! 
Still onward yet, and onward still, 

Till lightning's speed shall tire, 
Far distant worlds, dim twinkling stars, 

Evince the end no nigher! 
Vast are thy works, Jehovah great, 

Thou one eternal cause. 
Who spoke creation into birth. 

And stamped it with thj' laws. 
Let thoughts sublime of thee, o God, 

My immortal soul inflame. 
To raise my voice in song of praise, 

Unto thy holy name. 

The reader will excuse my rhymings, for though it is not 
my intention to indulge in poetry, the subject inspires those 
lofty thoughts that will occasionally bring forth my feeble 
efforts. 

Reason, if left free from dictation and the rod of oppres- 
sion, will, as naturally as the spark ascends, lead us upwards 



INTRODUCTION. 99 

along the unbroken chain of causality to the first, great, mov- 
ing cause that holds the beginning link firm and fast. 

In applying reason to rid the sacred word of God of its 
obscenities, absurdities, and destructive incumbrances that 
have been lugged into that holy book, I know not and care 
not by what means, no intelligent Christian can take offence. 
Talk to one opposed to the correction of those abuses, he will 
admit that they are stumbling blocks in the way of Christian 
faith, yet that they were nothing more than simply the modes 
of men's speaking in those early days; whereas, with God, 
there are no earlier or later days, and his language must al- 
ways be decent and intelhgible. To acknowledge the fact, 
that it was the figurative style of those early writers, is to 
acknowledge at once, that it was not God, who thus obscured 
his word, in order to make divisions in the church, and con- 
sequently that it was the language of men who were not in 
every word, they recorded, inspired. 

I will then say, in conclusion that no good or honest man 
can object to my endeavoring to correct those abuses, which 
have given license to the most ensanguined despots amongst 
men, and got up a rebellious feeling against God himself. The 
example, the language, and the doctrines of our loving, meek 
and lowly savior, admit of no false constructions or cruel per- 
secutions — so that, if we can bring the Old Testament to the 
practical piety and simplicity of the New, we may yet be able 
to do something for religion. In former days of man-worship, 
the people had their astrologers, augurs, and soothsayers, 
while in modern times they have the same thing. Every little 
neigborhood throughout the world have their great men of 
deep and mystic learning, who are worshipped as wonderful 
expounders of the chimeras and enigmas of the Bible. And 
hence it is that those wonderful Magi are opposed to discord- 
ing those mysteries and reducing it to the plain, simple word 
of God. 

Such is my love for the works of God, and such my con- 



100 INTRODUCTION. 

tempt for the mantua-maker's and taylor's competition with 
him, that I shall often introduce the scenes of nature in con- 
trast, much to the astonishment, no doubt, of many a nutshell 
pedagogue, who cannot comprehend how a writer can get out 
of the beaten track and mechanical routine of bookmaking. 
A large portion of the talents, as well as the money of the 
world, is absorbed in following the ridiculous fashions and 
fluctuating machinations of man, which, if spent in the im- 
provement of mind, and in the study of the immutable and 
eternal laws of God, to which alone we can look for lasting 
knowledge and for health and happiness, instead of an ignorant, 
roguish, and distracted community, we should become en- 
lightened in mind, enabled in soul, and harmonized in Christ 
as one loving brotherhood. 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

Sensation and Perception are, by most of authors, placed 
under one head, and treated of as in close connection, and yet 
as separate faculties or powers of mind. To quote the ob- 
viously false and inexplicable views contained in the many dis- 
tracted doctrines upon this subject, would be to make a hodge- 
podge volume, too unwieldly for use. It is only in respect then 
to custom that I treat the mind as though it were divisible into 
many parts, and head my articles with the false insignias of 
mind. Mind, like God, is a unit, and wholly indivisible, and for 
the want of a philosophic knowledge and strict adherence to this 
fact, has polytheism been the basis of many a learned book 
and the religion of as wise nations as any on earth. The 
Greecians and Romans, whose languages, even at this late day, 
are crammed into our heads, to the exclusion of more useful 
knowledge, worshipped at the shrine of many Gods, simply 
because they were in their books and taught by their teachers. 
Just so in regard to mind, the authors who manufacture books 
of mental philosophy for our schools, having the rare skill of 
those juggling gentlemen who draw wine and water from the 
same vessel, and such too were the jugglers of classic days who 
manufactured Gods at will. Our modern authors can divide, 
subdivide, ramify, classify, refine and inforce distinctions without 
a difference, and thus make up a large and learned book, neither 
understood by the writer nor his readers. Thus have those 
imaginative authors made innumerable and complicated divisions 
of a thing which God himself has made simple and indivisible, 
and what is unfortunate for the honor and dignity of science, 
our stupid and routine teachers have drudged and drilled them 



102 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

into the brains of tlieir pupils till thej have made mere jack- 
daws of them. It was precisely the same credulity and delusive 
feeling which divides the mind into so many separate and inde- 
pendent powers, that led to the polytheistic theology. A 
separate God was created by man for everything in existence, 
and then they were parceled out for the government of the 
various departments of the universe. Such too were the inde- 
pendent and separate interests of these Gods that they were 
often at war with each other. They were full of sensual and 
base intrigues and debaucheries, and yet did the learned books 
and the Clergy, who taught them, enjoin an humble worship of 
those detestable Gods, under the pain of death, nor did any 
one, in these days, doubt of such deep learning and clerical 
influence, but the divine Socrates who, for his scepticism swal- 
lowed the poison and paid the penalty. So much for deep and 
mystic learning and ecclesiastical teaching. Those learned 
manufacturers of Gods and rulers over the consciences of men, 
appointed a deity to preside over every function of nature, just 
as our metaphysicians appoint a separate power or faculty to 
govern every function, feeling, and emotion of soul, and yet 
do our teachers force their pupils to swallow whole batches of 
such warring faculties, when at the same time they condemn an 
equally rational doctrine, as a heathenish mythology. Such, 
indeed, has been the ridiculous extent to which this division and 
independence of faculties has been carried that Dr. Alexander, 
professor of theology at Princeton, has taught in his book on 
moral science, that the soul is not responsible for the acts of the 
will — a comfortable doctrine for evil doers. 

The systems of mental philosophy now taught in our schools 
are more vague complicated and incomprehensible than those 
maintained in the days of Plato and Aristotle, more than two 
thousand years ago. This want of improvement in so great a 
length of time, is owing to the want of original and independent 
thought, each book-maker being a mere copyist, and each teacher 
being of the same stupid and stereotyped order. Sir William 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 103 

Hershel says, that " the whole tendency of imperial art is to 
bury itself in technicalities and place its pride in complicated 
specialities and in mysteries known only to adepts." 

Again, the Rev. Isaac Wats, in his work on the improve- 
ment of the mind, says : " A man who dwells all his days 
amongst books, may have amassed together a vast heap of 
notions ; but he may be a mere scholar, which is a contemptible 
sort of a character in the world." This sentence speaks volumes 
in favor of coming out from the dark and factitious closet of 
the mechanical schools to the glowing light of heaven and the 
unerring revelation and guidance of nature. One of the ablest 
of Divines expresses his views thus : . " A teacher of divinity 
may be a living concordance and a walking index to theological 
follies, and yet know nothing of religion." Yes, and I will add, 
practice less. These facts I quote, as applying equally to the 
teachings of mental philosophy ; for learning in' the phenomena 
of mind, particularly where man, in the language of Scripture, 
"pretends to conceive beyond what God can do," makes him a 
foul. In short, no amount of labor or learning in abstract and 
mysterious things, can ever result in any settled or satisfactory 
standard of human action, whereas the laws of nature and the 
precepts of religion, untampered with by man, are so simple 
and so plain that he who runs may read. As I before said, 
the learned leaders of classic days, made Gods and appointed 
some to govern the seasons, and others to watch over all the 
vicissitudes in nature ; one for rain, another for storm, and so 
on, throughout the interminable changes in the warring elements, 
as well as for all the fortunes and misfortunes of man. Now, 
just as the one indivisible God has been divided out, has the 
one indivisible mind been divided into sensation, perception, con- 
sciousness, conception, memory, imagination, judgment, reason- 
ing, attention, taste and many other faculties, so called by our 
mechanical and modish teachers ; and just as rationally, might 
we add, the faculty of singing, fiddUng, dancing and all the 
other innumerable passions and emotions of soul, excited by the 



104 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

motives that pres'ent themselves, from moment to moment, 
throughout the chase of life. It was doubtless hard at i&rst for 
the pclytheist to get along with one God, and just as diJBScult 
would it be for the mystic "and technical pedagogue to make a 
book out of flat truisms, or to sustain himself as a deep and 
divine teacher in things to be understood by all. It appears 
that there must be mystery and humbugging kept up in all 
things, otherwise merit would claim her own, which would not 
suit the interest of the rulers of mankind. To give to God, 
who has made things simple and plain, all the honors, would be 
to reduce many of our adored leaders low, and hence the sen- 
sitive jealousy and bitter enmity against all who may have 
moral fortitude enough to bring sacred truth to bear against 
them. The Pope once had sovereign power over the human 
mind throughout the civilized world, so much so that he could 
dethrone crowned heads and degrade them at will, nor is the 
influence yet held over the mind by the many little Popes, less 
crushing in its power. These melancholy facts so degrading to 
humanity, I mention not only as legitimate in the history of 
mind, but to bring forcibly before it its enslaved condition, and 
thereby elevate, enlarge and no'jle the soul to feel its destined 
sphere, which can only be done by turning its attention from 
the petty arts of man to the natural and glorious works of 
God. I have so long meditated upon the sad history of man 
and the government of mind, that the picture is constantly be- 
fore me with all its melancholy and forbidding forms ; and my 
conscious duty to exhibit it to the reader may, and I am satis- 
fied, often does somewhat lead me astray from the argument 
which I will now resume, after saying that the reason for se- 
curing so much to church influences, is that the Clergy have 
been the teachers of mental science and of religion, true or 
false, throughout the world, and as our faith, in whatever 
religion we have been taught, whether of Boodhism that has 
led more than one third of the human family astray, spiritual 
dualism taught by Zoroaster, Mahometanism, Catholicism, Pro- 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 105 

testantism, or any other of the ten thousand vindicative and 
bloody schisms and pettyisms, controls the actions of men for 
good or evil, it is important that man should be taught a correct 
view of his own mind, which alone can keep him in the image 
of his God, and direct and sustain hun in the high destiny of his 
soul. 

I have said that the mind has been divided into many com- 
plicated and perplexing powers and faculties calculated to con- 
fuse and give the pupil a false view of his own mind, which 
God has made simple and indivisible. The word power is a 
powerful word which seems to carry great force with it, and it 
figures powerfully in our modern books of mental philosophy. 
Authors, in the very beginning, branch off largely upon the 
almost innumerable powers of mind, when, in reality, there is 
not a single power belonging to mind ; every idea being 
stamped upon it by the force and specific nature of the objects 
that operate upon it — so that mind is a mere recipient or basis 
of action. Let us experiment a little by way of analogy. Pow- 
der, for instance, as powerful as may be its results, has no 
power within itself, but must depend upon other agencies. It 
did not make itself, nor can it explode itself, but when the 
spark is applied, it does explode. Wood, in hke manner, has 
no power to burn, unless fire be applied. An alkali has no 
power to act upon itself, but when an acid is applied, an action 
takes place, and the result is a new creation of a thing that is 
neither one nor the other, but a saline matter, just as an idea 
is a new creation which is neither the mind that is operated 
upon, nor the object that operates upon the mind. Calomel 
operates upon the bowels, but is not the bowels, nor are the 
bowels calomel, nor does either constitute the result or effect 
which is simply the product of the agency of an external object 
upon our sensitive being. The rusty nail is not the lock-jaw, 
nor the death that proceeds from it, but simply the remote 
cause. So with mind,- which, with all the powers given it, has 
no power to think a thought, .or do an act without the appro- 



106 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

priate cause that begets it — otherwise we could think of things 
that had no existence, and speak languages we have never 
learned. It requires but a moment's thought to see that it is 
as impossible to perceive or know anything, the materials of 
which have not been impressed upon us, as for a blind man to 
see, or a deaf one to hear. Let one be blinded, and he cannot, 
by any power of his mind, see light, but open his eyes in mid- 
day, and no power he can command will exclude the force of 
light upon his mind, and the result is neither the mind, nor the 
light, but an effect called an idea of light. The ear, or rather 
the mind through the ear, is acted upon in like manner. The 
deaf mind, which has never been impressed or stirred by sound, 
can have no knowledge of sound, yet open his ears, and fire a 
gun, or agitate the air, and the mind has no power to avoid 
their impression, just as they may come. The mind might as 
well attempt to convert hoarse thunder into soft whispers as 
to change anything from what it really is, independent of the 
mind. If a coal of fire be applied to the touch, no effort of the 
soul can avoid the pain. Smell, taste, and all our other feelings 
or sensations are in the same category. These are simple 
experiments that show beyond all quibble the true character 
of mind. There is nothing within the range of God's creation 
that has any power to operate upon itself, all being established 
upon dualistic and dependent principles, as cause and effect — 
father and son — impulse and motion — nothing starting itself, 
and nothing stopping itself. God is the creator and primum 
mobile of the entire series of the moving Universe. 

We can readily conceive how one ball on a billiard table 
may put another in motion — that a third, and so on — till every 
ball be moved by the first impulse, and just as easy is it to 
imagine an endless chain so firmly linked that the moving of 
the first link one inch would move the entire chain of countless 
millions of links, each link depending upon its preceding link, 
and the whole fatally bound to the first, which is firmly held 
by God's own hand. These are obvious facts, founded in the 



• SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 107 

constitution and nature of things, and no idle imagining or 
sophistry of man can ever change them. If God did not give 
to the human mind its fixed laws, and set bounds thereto, then 
God is not our creator, and as we have an undeniable existence, 
we either created ourselves before ourselves had an existence, 
or we must look to some other source for that existence. But, 
as a farther indulgence in the pursuit of these great principles, 
though legitimate in the history of mind, would lead us from 
the strict argument, I will again assert the fact that sensation 
or feeling is the substratum of the whole phenomenal series of 
mind. Very different acids may act upon the same base — 
forming different characters, and bearing separate names. The 
same wax as the symbol of mind may receive endless impres- 
sions called ideas, yet all depending upon the same basis for 
their existence. Just in like manner will the same paper receive 
any number of characters or sentiments, while the same ma- 
terials in the kaleidoscope will by each turn exhibit new forms 
ad infinitum. Yet the wax cannot press itself, the paper can- 
not write itself, nor can the kaleidoscope turn itself any more 
than the mind can operate upon itself, or produce its own sen- 
sations. The blind man, as before said, knows nothing of 
light or colors, till such sensation be impressed upon the mind 
by light — the feeling or sensation of sound is unknown, till 
impressed through the ear, nor could we tell by any exertion 
of mind, or even by aid of other senses, that vinegar was sour 
or sugar sweet, till tasted. The nose cannot see, nor the eye 
smell, but all the senses telling us as plainly as God himself 
could speak, that they are appointed to convey their appro- 
priate impressions to the mind, which has no choice, but to 
receive them, according to God's original appointment. 

Though the senses are separate messengers and witnesses to 
the soul, of the external world, yet they aid each other in 
making up a judgment of facts. For instance, though we see 
objects by the eye, it gives us no correct idea of the distance 
or relative position of those objects. This fact might be shown 



108 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

in various ways, but as short facts prove the position better 
than any course of reasoning could, I will not dwell, but give 
a case in hand. The first case noticed in proof of my proposi- 
tion was by the eminent surgeon, Cheselden, who operated 
upon an adult for congenital cataract. Upon seeing objects 
for the first time in his life, he would as quickly stretch his 
arms to reach distant objects, even the heavenly bodies, as 
those within reach. Every object appeared equally near and 
in actual contact with the eye, and looked as pictures do to us 
painted upon an even, flat surface. This was natural, as the 
light, that came from every visible object, was equally in con- 
tact with his eye, and he could no more tell the relative dis- 
tance of visual objects, without the sense of touch and power 
of locomotion to move from object to object, and compare and 
test the facts, than we with all our experience can tell the 
relative distance of the heavenly bodies, as the stars, for 
instance, of equal brightness looking to us all to be at the 
same distance, when in reality some of them are milhons of 
miles beyond others. But we have no power to touch or move 
about amongst them, and ascertain those relative distances, and 
the light, as before stated, coming from every star, and in 
every case being in contact with the mind, before the mind 
can see them, it is natural that they should all look to be at 
equal distances from us. I have closely observed the progress 
of infants, who, pleased with the light of a candle, will smile 
and make as many efforts to lay hold of it without their 
reach as one within it, and even when adepts in little things 
in a narrow circle, children will climb to elevated places to 
touch the moon. I have been often deceived in viewing distant 
mountains that hid our own horizon, in finding them detached, 
and some of them many miles beyond others, when at a great 
way off they bore the appearance of one smooth and continuous 
object. 

Our optical illusions are by far greater than those of any 
other sense, while touch is the more equal and correct. The 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 109 

young man whom Cheselden brought to sight, had a cat and 
a dog that he delighted to handle, but when brought within 
his view, even several times, he could not by sight distinguish 
one from the other by name, till tired with such perplexity he 
one day put his hand upon them, then, pushing the cat aside, 
said: "Go, Puss, I will know you next .time." Thus it was, 
by the combination of sight and touch, that he gained a 
knowledge of facts. We might hear a cow low and a man 
halloo ten thousand times, and we would never distinguish 
which the voice came from, without the aid of another sense. 
If we see the cow and hear its voice, and then see the man 
and hear his voice, it may come from any distance, and whether 
we see the object or not, we can tell the animal from the 
sound. In like manner may the sense of smell be associated 
with impressions through other senses. I never smell or taste 
an orange, that Mexico with the roads, scenery, and adventures 
I there met with, don't come up fully and freshly before my 
mind. Being feverish, I used oranges and other tropical and 
acidulous fruits, in many of which delightful groves I loitered 
and refreshed myself. A.nd here the reader cannot fail to 
understand how those ideas became so closely associated or 
linked together that the movement of one link stirs them all. 

" Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, 
Our thoughts are linked y many a hidden chain. 
Awake but one, and lo what myriads rise — 
Each stamps its image as the other flies! " 

" And hence the charms historic scenes impart — 
Hence Tiber awes and Avon melts the heart. 
Aerial forms in Tempos classic vale, 
Glance through the gloom and whisper in the gale — 
In wild Vaucluse with love and Laura dwell, 
And watch and weep in Eloisa's oeU! " 

I quote similar illustrations from other authors as will be 
seen below, to prove how our ideas are linked together by 
association : 

" How soft the music of those village bells 
Falling at intervals upon the ear, 



110 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

With easy force it opens all the cells 
Where memory slept. Where I have heard 
A kindred melody, the scene recurs, 
And with it all its pleasures and its pains! " 

This connection of thought, received through different 
senses, is more properly treated of under the head of " Asso- 
ciation." But I have given some illustrations here for the 
purpose of showing how our past thoughts may be recalled 
by present feelings or sensations, and to disprove the doctrine 
that has so long obstructed the progress both of religion and 
science. It has been almost universally published in books 
and taught in schools that we have power to call up at 
pleasure, or originate thoughts that did not come through the 
senses, and more than this, that we have ideas or thoughts 
which have existed from all eternity, long before the creation 
of man or the existence of mind itself. And now, as ludicrous 
and burlesquing as the statement may appear, it is undeniably 
true, and all the reader has to do is to turn to authority and 
read for himself. Cudworth, Descartes, Berkeley, the Bishop 
of Cumberland, and Dr. Clarke are a few amongst the many 
advocates of the " Idealistic System " of psychology. These 
authors look with contempt upon the objective world, and our 
gross senses or sensationalism, which I am aiming to teach, 
as degrading to humanity, because belonging to the brutes in 
common with man. They aim to establish in the place of 
sensationalism a system of soaring philosophy that looks only 
to etherial sources for our thoughts. They maintain that 
there are pure and divine conceptions independent of our 
senses and the objective world. This system is nothing more 
than the renewal of the Platonic school, which taught, as do 
those distinguished gentlemen, that our pure thoughts are the 
actual and immediate emanations from the mind of Deity him- 
self, where they have existed from all eternity. The fanatical 
sallies and transcendentalisms of Swedenborg, where a coor- 
dinate archetype of our every thought is to be found in the 
mind of God, which gives to mortal intellection, inspiration, 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. Ill 

and angelic wisdom, are of this school. Thus this lower and 
sensual life of ours is raised to the pure and spiritualised 
regions of divine embodiment where the soul can gaze upon 
the higher spheres, and be inspired with immortal truth. 
Wrapt in Elysian reveries, those souring Divines felt them- 
selves within the sphere of the spiritual world, and thus be- 
came lost in the reveries of their own souls. This fanatical 
enthusiasm, or rather mystic dementation, has been carried to 
a greater extent in Germany, the land of legendary books and 
of addled brains, than in any other country. This undeniable 
history of facts may appear truly laughable, but it is la- 
mentable — it is melancholy and darkly portentous. Por, if 
our intellectual labors of many thousand years, in search of 
the just rule of religion, of morality, and the harmonious and 
happy government of man, have only served to make man the 
greatest enemy of man, and left us more distracted and in 
doubt, what are we- to expect in future. The same man who 
looks at his own constitution and the established order of 
nature, so plainly sees the will of God, that he feels it a con- 
descension to argue seriously against such monstrous nonsense, 
nor will argument ever serve the purpose. The well known 
professor. Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, published a series of num- 
bers against the medical mysticisms and humbuggeries of the 
day, but finding that a " Faith Doctor," who settled at his 
very door, did more business than himself, and that swarms 
of the mystic and magic brotherhood of high and low degree 
were thriving around him, he gave up all argument against 
them, as a sensible man would, in throwing straws against the 
wind. These facts clearly show that there is nothing too 
ridiculous and monstrous for the fanatical and superstitious 
taint of man. As contemptibly, false, and demoralizing as 
was the Heathen Mythology, no man of the day dared doubt 
but Socrates. And we have in the history of man the melan- 
choly result. No one but Omar, the Learned, among the 
Moslem people ever doubted the inspirational infallibility of 



112 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Mahomet, and he had to fly his country. Whoever had a 
mind of sufficient rationality and independence, as to doubt of 
the vice-regency and divine supremacy of the Pope, but Martin 
Luther, who was anathematized with curses .in the name of 
God, and degraded to a level with the brute ? A volume of 
such credulity and misrule might be brought up in panoramic 
review from departed ages and slumbering nations who have 
lived and died slaves to the grossest and most debasing super- 
stition. The pupil who starts out upon his journey of life, 
should take warning at the melancholy history of his race, and 
looking to his own constitution and the laws of nature that 
surround him and sustain him from his cradle to his grave, 
step firmly on under the guidance of the great author of his 
existence. He should avoid, as he would, the serpent's charm, 
all human authority and the vain and idle imaginings, nor 
sacrilegiously put on the Millerite "ascension robes" to 
transcend our allotted sphere as those soaring philosophers 
have done. But oh, that tyrannical grasp of superstition and 
human authority are such that I fear we shall ever be slaves, 
chained down like the galley-slave to labor our days out in 
abject misery. We view it as irrational to worship sticks and 
stones, lizzards and alligators, and yet it is not a whit more 
so than to worship our erring fellow-mortals, who set them- 
selves up in diametrically opposite doctrines of religion — each 
professing to be infallible arbiters of the eternal destiny of 
men — to which impossibilities we obsequiously submit. Just 
as soon would I expect to get to heaven by climbing the 
tower of Babel, as by following such contentious and distracted 
parties. God has opened his unmistaken book of natural 
revelation before us, and he has endowed us with ample reason 
to ascend from the known to the unknown, or from effect to 
cause — on and on — to know him and to enjoy his mighty 
works. 

It is our ignorance of our own minds and our confidence in 
those of others that has ever led man from the paths of truth 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 113 



and cheated him of his liberty, prosperity and happiness in life ; 
yes, and of his settled prospects for eternity. The teachings of 
our schools to give to our frenzied and delusive emotions of soul 
instead of being guided by the simple, immutable and eternal 
laws of nature, are at the root of all the fanatical and distracted 
opinions of man. Those visionary Divines and rulers of the 
world condemn the organization God has given us, and deserting 
our senses as legitimate sources of knowledge, appeal to what 
they deem a higher and purer source, that of a mental phantas- 
magoria. They first set down vulgarity as unworthy of the 
dignity of man, then pronouncing sensation to be a vulgar attri- 
bute of common organism, they at once dispatch it as un- 
worthy of any association with what they call by an unwar- 
rantable and gratuitous assumption, the higher powers of the 
soul. Thus we see how the credulous novice may be duped by 
high authority and the skillful use of vague and ambiguous 
terms. By this species of sophistry has the plain and simple 
doctrine been cast out of the schools by all mystic teachers, 
when in reality, sensation is the soul itself, and nothing but the 
soul and the only characteristic distinction between the material 
and immaterial worlds. These false teachers, when in contro- 
versy with a materialist, will exultingly say : "Matter cannot 
feel ; the mind or soul feels, therefore, it cannot be matter," 
and yet because God has given feehng to brutes, they discard 
it as a gross and vulgar thing and a clog to the high dignity 
and lofty soaring of the soul. To attach sensation to the soul 
of one of those purely etherial gentlemen, they would feel de- 
graded to the level of the brute. And this is the secret of how 
it is that mental science has not advanced one step ; no, not 
one inch, by the labor of many thousand years. Dissatisfied 
with God's own appointments, men have made pseudo-gods of 
themselves, and following the vagaries of their own imagina- 
tions, have been led into the innumerable and inextricable 
labyrinths of mysticism, when one round of the ladder of 
natural science which reaches from earth to the platform of 



114 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

heaven, has not yet been ascended. No amount of learning or 
labor can ever bring truth out of falsehood, and the mightiest 
minds may still lash the air as they have done, for centuries 
past without leaving a mark of anything visible or valualjle be" 
hind them. Were we to look at things as they exist and grant 
the many defects and infirmities of mortality, we should be 
better fitted to enter upon the investigation of our own constitu- 
tions and of the great laws of the universe, than any mystic and 
mental philosopher who has ever written. True, we have had 
a few sound, clear-headed writers, as Bacon, Locke, Mill and 
Comte, but all the institutions of learning in the world, both 
Catholic and Protestant, are controlled by the Clergy, who 
write their own text-books, and, true or false, drill them into 
the heads of their submissive and drudging dullards, just as the 
words are put into the mouths of parrots or stuffed into the 
heads of learned pigs. And thus it is, that books of true learn- 
ing are denounced as heretical and degraded in the eyes of all 
Church members, till soon they are thus driven out of print. 
An author must be a true philanthropist and be inspired with 
a godlike spirit and fortitude to write a book now-a-days without 
catering to the vulgar prejudice of the community, for he cannot 
expect either pay or gratitude for his services. 

We know that the vulgar realities of life clip the wings of 
fancy and obscure the bright sunshine of imagination and the 
poetry of existence, and dissatisfy us with God's appointments. 
And yet, when understood, it is the only source from which we 
draw our lessons of wisdom. The tipsy joys and poetic reveries 
which enwrap us in the higher spheres of etherial mysticism, 
beget an aversion to the practical teachings of true philosophy. 
If we surrender ourselves to the guidance of reason, we cannot 
but know that God has seen proper to give us senses like the 
brute, stomachs hke the brute, sensations like the brute ; yes, 
and pleasures and pains, hopes and fears, desires and aversions, 
loves and hatreds, with all the passions and emotions of soul, 
which facts are more fully shown under the head of "Instinct." 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 115 

I have said it is folly to reason against the beguiling delu- 
sions and fanaticisms of man and his craven sycophancy to human 
authority ; for, no sooner are we cut loose by the power of 
some great reformer, than we fall under the dictatorial domin- 
ion of other designing leaders. This is the true history of man, 
and from it we should 'draw lessons of wisdom. But a short 
time since the code of witchcraft with all its horrid rites and 
mummeries, was gravely sustained by law, and then it was that 
cm' Divines of etherial and mystic systems of philosophy, could 
solemnly swear before the high tribunals of their country that 
they saw old women riding through the air on broom-sticks. 
Yes, and then it was, to the eternal disgrace of man and his 
high imaginative soul so much boasted of, that cruel ordeal of 
both fire and water was enforced, where the poor, unoffending 
wretch was doomed to walk barefoot and blindfold over nine 
red ploughshares, then to be plunged into deep water, where, if 
they drowned, they were innocent ; but if they swam, they were 
witches and to be burnt. Laugh not, my reader, at these as- 
tounding truths, nor think that your own soul is free from the 
taint of superstition and of the enslaving and degrading schemes 
of mysticism, for I will here assert that there is not one man in 
ten thousand who exercises that high and enobling prerogative, 
reason, that God has given him, and who is not under the ac- 
cursed influence of others. I say accursed, for God's condemn- 
ation must assuredly rest upon such as cast aside that gifted 
attribute by which himself is great, and blindly submit to the 
dictation of his erring fellow-mortals. I will close these reflec- 
tions by asking the candid reader whether he does not believe 
that there is more idolatry in the world at this time, than there 
ever has been at any other period, and whether God may no>t, 
in the evil to which we are hastening, turn us all from this Eden 
which we do not appreciate, into Hell. After eighteen hundred 
and fifty eight years from the vicarious death of his son, he sees 
a large portion of the human family in gross idolatry of man- 
worship, not one in ten thousand, even of Church-professors, 



116 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

exercising that divine gift of reason or regarding his natural 
revelation and the laws under which they live, move and have 
their being. Nor can the example of Christ or his holy and 
simple precepts restrain man from the wiley influence of human 
authority. 

Though opposed to wasting time by quotations from any 
quarter, I will give a few lines from Morrell's "History of 
Modern Philosophy," to show that I have not exaggerated the 
distracted condition of mental science. (See page 206.) His 
book, of near eight hundred pages, is full of such representations 
of man's melancholy and bewildered folly. "These phenomena, 
then, which we have just enumerated, may be viewed as the various 
waves of scepticism and mysticism, which having been first raised 
by the storms of controversy, in which the idealism of Des. 
cartes and the sensationalism of Gassendi, were so long engaged, 
propagated themselves in different degrees of intensity for many 
years over several parts of the continent of Europe. In the 
meantime the phases of idealistic and sensational philosophy 
themselves had altogether changed. The philosophy of Des- 
cartes had passed through the hands of Malebranche and 
Spinoza, had been remodelled by Leibnitz and had come forth 
in a new dogmatic form under the auspices of Wolf. That of 
Gassendi, on the other hand, had given place to the more pro- 
found, and at the same time more popular sensationalism of 
Locke and his expounder Condillac, so that the effects of the 
old Cartesian controversy had hardly expended themselves, 
before the fresh struggles of these remodelled systems were 
throwing in the seeds of a new scepticism and a new mysti- 
cism, which were to bear their fruits during the greater 
part of the eighteenth century." Thus we see how distracted 
the world has been rendered by these varied and conflicting 
systems of philosophy, and if the reader will look into Cud- 
worth's treatise on " Eternal and Immutable Morality," he will 
there see that author's violent opposition to every species of 
sensationalism, and this name I mention simply as one of the 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. lit 

leaders in the solid phalanx formed against 'poor sensation^ 
which, m the language of those authors, is "low, gross, sensual, 
grovelling and brutal," with many other such degrading epithets. 

Let us now see what this sensation is, that has induced the 
Clergy to throw Locke and all his sensational followers out of 
the schools of the world. That man possesses sensation will 
not be denied, nor will it be maintained that he gave it to him- 
self, which refers it at once to the great author of our being, 
and as God has created nothing in vain, we should not look 
upon sensation with contempt or pronounce it unwise. 

Sensation, moreover, is, as I have said, the soul, the whole 
soul and nothing but the soul. But for sensation I should be 
a confirmed materialist, as I can satisfactorily account upon 
dualistic and dynamic principles, for every phenomenon of or- 
ganic life — save that of sensation and thought, and without 
sensation there can be no thought. Let us not condemn 
sensation, then, when we are nothing without it. We cannot 
think without it, nor can we establish a reputation but upon 
it. We speak of a sense of honor, a sense of moral duty, 
a sense of propriety or impropriety, a sense of gratitude, etc. 
Feeling is not only the basis of all sympathy, honor, and good- 
ness of man, but is the most glorious attribute of God himself, 
and without it he could not exist as a God. All his love, 
mercy, forgiveness and kind feeling for man, is from sensation 
or feeling, and how blind and brutal then, must be the man who 
could speak with irreverence of this sacred attribute of feeling. 
I am well assured that those thoughtless authors' low estimate 
of sensation is from their gross ignorance of what sensation is. 
The influence that name will often have, even upon the minds 
of sensible men, is remarkable, and in no case more so than this. 
Sensation being produced or excited by external objects, and 
that through the instrumentality of our senses, it is supposed 
that sensation is as gross a material as the senses themselves, 
and hence I think the exclusion of sensation from any associa- 
tion with what the transcendental writers call the higher powers 



118 MAN FROM mS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

of the soul. Impartial reflection will, however, show that sensa- 
tion is not in the sense, but that it is the sentient or percipient 
being itself, in other words the soul. Though we feel with the 
hand, the sensation is not in the hand, but in the mind ; for, if 
the nerve of communication between the hand and the mind be 
cut off, there can be no sensation, and so with all the other 
senses. It is not the external eye that sees, but the inner eye 
of the soul. We cannot, for instance, see the satellites of 
Jupiter without a telescope, yet it is not the telescope that sees 
them. In receiving our ideas from external objects, we do not 
take in their pictures, images or qualities, but our soul under- 
goes different sensations, and we give names to express or 
represent those sensations or emotions of soul called sensations. 
These sensations constitute our ideas which cannot be big or 
little, black and white, round, angular, etc. The fragrance of 
a rose is neither in the rose nor in the olfactories of the nose, 
but in the mind, and though there is a matter exhaled from the 
rose, which, when brought in contact with the sense of smell, 
produces the result, it might exhale forever without fragrance, 
were there no sensitive bemg to act upon, nor can it be pos- 
sible that the matter exhaled from the rose bears any more 
resemblance to the sensation or idea it produces, than the knife 
does, to the pain which it inflicts. And again, the odoriferous 
particles producing the sensation upon the nerves of smell, are 
no more carried to the brain than the rusty nail is carried to 
the muscles of the jaw, which from sensation and spasm lock it. 
Thus all the objects of sensations or ideas might exist forever, 
without sensations or ideas, if there were no minds to feel them ; 
and the soul itself, might, in like manner, remain forever without 
sensations or ideas but for the objects that excite or beget sen- 
sations and ideas. For instance, if there had never been a rose 
in the world, we could never have either seen or smelt a rose. 
Hundreds of illustrations might be given, but my favorite simile 
of parent and child easily understood by all, may here come in, 
in further elucidation of this idea, where the mother, having the 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 119 

impressibility, or susceptibility like the mind, might remain forever 
without a product or offspring without a father, nor could the 
father produce anything without the mother. In like manner, 
the mind cannot conceive or operate upon itself, nor produce a 
single sensation or idea, while the external world is equally 
barren of sensations and ideas ; but when brought in contact 
with mind, begets thought. Powder, as before stated, would 
never exj^lode without the spark, nor the spark without the 
powder. Acids and alcalis, in like manner, if kept apart, 
would produce no new creation which, in their union, they have 
power to do. There is no sensation, then, in the external 
world, nor is there any originally in the mind, but when brought 
into contact through the senses and nervous influences, there is 
a new creation or feeling to which we give the name of sensa- 
tion. That the feeling is in the mind, is proven by the recollec- 
tion of objects after the sense through which they were received, 
is no more. As in cases where persons become deaf or blind, 
and still remember those objects of sense. A farther confirma- 
tion of the fact is where persons have had a painful disease of 
the foot or hand which pain is not immediately removed by 
amputation, but may remain in the mind, the foot and hand 
still being complained of as though they had not been removed. 

I have shown elsewhere that there is nothing in creation 
which can operate upon itself. The body is dependent upon 
food, digestion and assimilation, while the mind is equally de- 
pendent upon its appointed excitants from the objective world 
or the internal functional stimuli, showing the universal law of 
mutual dependencies. 

Having shown in other parts of this work that mind can no 
more operate upon itself, or beget an idea within itself, than it 
can create a world or make itself, I will here only explain how 
it is in a philosophic point of view, that when a man kills him- 
self, he does not operate upon himself, as has been asserted. 
Man is a generic name, making, like the universe, a unit in 
name, but many in parts, constituting a complicated system of 



120 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

causes and effects. A man may shoot himself through the 
heart, but the heart does not shoot itself, nor the ball operate 
upon itself, but was sent by the force of explosion ; the powder 
did not make or explode itself, nor did the spark create or 
operate upon itself, but refers to the cap, the cap to the cock, 
the cock to the spring, the spring to the trigger, the trigger to 
the finger, that to the tendon, the tendon to the muscle, the 
muscle to the nerve, the nerve to the will, the will to the motive 
that begot the will, and that to more remote causes which 
could we trace, would lead us on like the endless chain, link by 
link, ad infinitum. 

Man is a universe within himself, acd like the universe, 
neither created nor governs himself, but is governed by dualistic 
powers. The celestial bodies are kept within their spheres by 
two opposing powers, that of centripetal and centrifugal agen- 
cies, while all the functions of the human system are carried on 
by similar laws. The blood does not circulate itself, but is 
thrown out with great force by the heart, which does not 
operate upon itself, but is alternately filled and stimulated by 
the blood. 

Though not an atom in the universe can have created itself 
or put itself in motion, yet every atom acts upon every other 
atom in the ceaseless and eternal round of motion. The hand, 
though an efficient member of the body, cannot operate upon 
itself, but depends upon the muscles and the mind, nor can the 
legs be moved or directed to any purpose but by the will, which 
will does not create or operate upon itself, but is in turn the 
result of antecedent causes, and so on through the dependent 
series of secondary causes to the beginning or hand of God 
himself, the Creator and prime mover of all. If we could start 
from the most simple effect and follow link by link along the 
chain of causality, we should as certainly arrive at the throne 
of God, as that there is a God. For, if God be at the begin- 
ning of all things by tracing back to the end of all things, we 
certainly should find the beginning. 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 121 

Though we think ourselves wise in the sturly of dead lan- 
guages and the isms of conventional life, the time is fast ap- 
proaching, when we shall look back upon this age as one of 
Cimmerian darkness and gross ignorance. 

But to drop all reflections upon the consequences of a false 
view of the human mind, we will return to sensation and see 
whether the mind can exist without it. Feeling is the first in- 
dication of life, when the child quickens or moves at four and a 
half months of gestation, and when we cease to feel, we are 
dead. And we only know that we exist by feeling that we 
exist. Feeling not only gives us all the knowledge we have of 
the actuality of things, but of the relation of things ; for, in the 
highest and purest spheres of intellection, it is the author of 
all we know and all we do. We feel a sense of honor, of duty 
and of gratitude ; but this we need not further repeat, for every 
man left to common sense is persuaded in his own mind that he 
can neither think nor act without a feeling or motive for 
thought and action. The learned members of the Academy of 
Natural Science at Paris, who were forming a Dictionary of 
Natural History, defined a crab to be a small red fish that 
walked backwards, and upon referring the case to Cuvier for 
his approbation, he replied : " Gentlemen, there are three objec- 
tions to your definition. First, the crab is not a fish ; secondly, 
it is not red, and thirdly, it does not walk backwards." I have 
a similar objection to the learned divisions and independent 
powers of mind ; first, because the mind is a unit and indi- 
visible, and secondly, these faculties or powers of mind, so 
called, bemg nothing more than its properties or conditions, 
cannot be independent of it, or separable from it. For, 
take from it its constituent properties or qualities, and there 
is nothing left. Everything in creation is what it is by its 
properties, or in simple terms, by that which makes it so. 
Take from gold solidity, color and extension, and it is no longer 
gold, and take from God himself power and wisdom, and he is 

no longer God. And yet the learned professor of theology and 

6 



122 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

moral science in the seminary at Princeton, has taught in his 
book on moral philosophy, that good or bad qualities may be 
added to or taken from the soul without affecting it. In my 
simple conception the good quahties of a soul make it a good 
soul, and with as much certainty do its bad qualities make it 
a bad one. Those who believe in the doctrine of Election may 
teach with professor Alexander that the wicked acts of a man 
cannot vitiate the essence of the soul ; for, if a soul be elected 
from all eternity to be saved, and that perseverance is inevitable, 
the soul cannot be any act of its own be lost. Here are the 
words of the professor himself: "The notion, that corrupt prin- 
ciples must vitiate the essence of the soul, is without foundation." 
And many more such expressions might be quoted from the 
same author. (See Moral Science, page 152.) Those, however, 
w^ho believe that God was in earnest when he declared that 
every man should be held responsible for the deeds done in the 
body, may, with propriety, teach the opposite doctrine, that 
wicked deeds will vitiate the soul ; yes, and even destroy it. 
Those arbitrary extensions and complicated divisions of ^-ii 
unextended and indivisible soul are not only dangerous in their 
consequences by their leading us shamefully astray from the 
simplicity of nature into the mazes of metaphysics that never have 
nor never will be understood. I have coupled sensation and per- 
ception m accordance with custom, but they are in reality one and 
the same thing. We cannot perceive without feeling, nor can we 
feel without perceiving. Let one open his eyes and perceive a man 
standing before him, and he at once feels that he is there, thinks 
he is there, supposes he is there, imagines he is there, judges he 
is there, and knows he is there. These and many other terms 
might be used to mean the same thing, showing how deceptive 
language is and how often we are misled by mere sounds. 
Here was a simple feeling or consciousness of an object, and 
though we have applied a number of those independent powers 
and faculties so foolishly called to express it, yet it must be 
seen that they all resolve themselves into the simple principle 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 123 

of the soul, that of a feeling or consciousness of things. We 
are apt to think that every term has a separate meaning, and 
this is what produces so much unmeaning controversy in meutal 
science. For instance, the same man may have a dozen names 
and he may take on a new name for every act of his life, and 
yet he is the same indivisible man. What is conscience bu* a 
feeling of right and wrong. Reason is based upon a feeling 
of the agreement or disagreement of testimony, or objects that 
come feelingly to the mind, and we cannot feel these things 
without knowing them, nor know them without feeling them. 

Judgment is another term of the same import, meaning 
nothing more than a belief, which belief is our feeling upon the 
subject. We may imagine many things, but all our imaginings 
are but the re-feeling of our first sensations. Which fact is 
rendered certain by our not being able to reflect upon or 
imagine anything that did not come to the mind by sensation. 
For instance, a man reared in a dark cave, who never saw a 
knife or was cut with anything so as to feel pain, would have 
no more fear of a knife than of a rose. But let a knife be 
thrust into him but once, and ever after would he have the 
dread of a knife, and the sight of one would feelingly remind 
him of the pain. An infant, when it begins to reach after 
pleasing objects will take hold of a candle quicker than any- 
thing brought within its reach, but being once burnt, it. will 
ever after avoid it and hence the adage : " A burnt child 
dreads the fire." Which fact, in its application to our mode, 
and only of receiving knowledge, simple as it is, is actually 
Vorth more than all the theoretic and silly books I have ever 
read upon mental philosophy, which look to spiritual intuition 
for our knowledge. 

The ruminating of a cow is an exact parallel with ouiv me- 
mories, imaginations and reflections, and the gastronomic philo- 
sopher might with as much propriety teach that the cow's cud, 
when brought back to the mouth by rumination, was not from 
the external world, but innate, and the working of spiritual 



i?4 



MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 



agencies, as for our mental philosophers to contend that our 
ideas, when brought back by memory, reflection, association, 
or imagination, had not their original source from the external 
world, through our senses, but that they are spiritual and 
eternal emanations from God himself. 

. Some philosophers knowing it to be undeniable that a 
large portion of our ideas are through our senses and made 
sure only by experience and observation with a semblance of 
honesty, agree to split the difiference by admitting that most 
of our knowledge is from the material world, but yet that there 
are ideas, as honor, obligation, gratitude, time, space and 
other abstract knowledge too refined for the gross senses, and 
consequently claim a higher origin, that of supernatural agency. 
A writer must be self-stultified who cannot see that these are 
things of mere relation, and as much dependent upon sense as 
the shadow is upon its substance. They are correlative, and 
consequently nothing but results. Honor is not a principle or 
a real and independent entity, but an attache, a thing that 
qualifies something of real existence. But for the absence of 
light, there would be no darkness, but for good, there would 
be no such word as evil, and but for things genuine, there 
would be no counterfeits, and but for men with their sensations 
of pleasure and pain, which render them susceptible, there 
could be no good or evil act towards them. For, in the first 
place, they would have no real existence, and in the second 
place, there could neither be enmities nor friendships, and con- 
sequently no acts of honor, virtue or gratitude. These high 
sounding things, as virtue, honor, sympathy and gratitude* 
taught in our schools to be spiritual promptings and inde- 
pendent of oar gross organisms, as certainly originate in our 
nature and condition in life, as any other quality, passion, or 
emotion belonging to man. Had not God interwoven sensi- 
bility into our nature, and given us certain appetites and 
wants, the greatest dullard must see that we could not ad- 
minister to those wants, and consequently could not exercise 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 125 

those high and noble feelings, so that after all, it will be seen 
that virtue, honor and gratitude, with all other kinds and hu' 
man feelings, either towards God or man arise from the sensi- 
tive organization God has given us and the relative position he 
has placed us in, both in regard to our fellow-man and to him- 
self. Similarity of organization for enjoyment or misery gives 
us a congeniality of feeling, and from this simple arrangement 
of our Creator, proceed all our sympathies and kind acts 
towards our suffering fellow-mortals. And thus, it must be 
admitted that as eternal and independent of man as may be 
those high sounding words of Chalmers and the spiritual 
schools, that no knowledge or exercise of such principles, 
could exist independent of man and his physical relations in 
life. 

God himself, if alone in the Universe, could not exercise 
honor, justice, and kindness except towards space and dura- 
tion, which are not subjects of honor, justice, and mercy. 
Duration and space are the only things truly eternal, for 
except in time and space God could not exist, but as they 
have no sensibilities, they are not the subjects of kindness, 
honor, or gratitude, as are the sensitive beings created by 
God himself. Ah, but still, they cry out that honor with its 
noble and kindred feelings, is spiritually eternal, and I still 
answer that if so, without percipient and sentient beings, they 
could never be known or applied. Even when honor is exer- 
cised amongst the subjects of honor, it is a creature of educa- 
tion that lives or dies according to the conditions and wants 
of man, and is in no two countries or ages alike. It is an 
honor for a Catholic to kiss the Pope's big toe, while to a 
Protestant it would be a disgrace. In regard to obligation, 
it has no independent or self-existence, but must attach to 
persons and grow out of circumstances, and consequently is as 
much dependent upon experience and the actual conditions of 
life, as any other event belonging to life. As to gratitude, it 
is truly a heavenly principle, yet by no means dependent upon 



126 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

supernatural agencies to make its obligations known, for every 
creature possessing sensation is through that sensibility in- 
structed to know how to act towards others, and upon this 
natural constitution of man is founded the golden rule "to do 
unto others as we would they should do unto us." 

Thus we see that this vulgar sensation ostracised, because 
unworthy the association with the higher faculties so flatter- 
ingly and falsely called, is the living and active foundation of 
all good, and in truth — the mind itself — for without sensation 
there is no mind. Nothing more clearly shows divine wisdom 
and parental kindness than the intertwining of sensation into 
every fibre of our mental constitution. But those sacrilegious 
book-makers, ^' plus sages que ks sages" have condemned God's 
economy as unwise, and beneath the dignity and high prero- 
gatives and powers of mind which they have most shamelessly 
and arrogantly assumed to themselves. Without sensation 
we could have no love for God, feeling that he is our creator 
and protector, begets an obligation on our part to love and 
serve him. 

Rewards and punishments are based exclusively upon sen- 
sation, for without sensation we could neither feel the joys of 
heaven, nor the pains of hell. If then, sensation be given for 
the enjoyment of the disembodied soul in heaven, as taught in 
the Book of God, I cannot see how those pseudo-gods exclude 
it from their books. In all our obligations and appointments 
we appeal to sensation as the arbiter of action. We will go 
or stay, or do or not do, as we may feel about it. Anger and 
revenge as well as love and gratitude have the same ever 
present and prompting guide: sensation or feeling. We say, a 
man has insulted us, or wounded our feelings or sensations, 
and we consequently feel that we should gratify, or soothen 
our feelings by revenge. Cowardice and fear also originate 
from feeling, and all governments are controlled by feeling 
whether in peace or war. In fine, sensibility or feeling is the 
distinguishing characteristic both of God and man, and the 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 121 

only argument and hope for immortality, and grossly ignorant 
and boldly rebellious of heavenly authority must be the man 
who can call it low, base, brutal, sensual, and degrading. 

The penetrating observer will find that the whole opposi- 
tion to the doctrine of sensationalism arises from the fact that 
brutes have it in common with man. But as I have before 
observed, we should not tear out our stomachs and refuse our 
digestion, because they are possessed in like manner by the 
brute. When Grod has seen proper to bestow these powers 
and blessings, it should not be with man to condemn or 
pronounce vulgarity upon them. Job, of old, said: "Who 
knoweth that the soul of man goes upwards, and that of the 
brute downward." Tupper, as I think, before quoted, says: 
" What hath the faithful dog less than reason, or the brute 
man more than instinct ? " I could quote a volume from 
Divines and other feeling writers, in favor of the brute's having 
an immortal soul, to reduce to utter shame and contempt 
those writers with conscience seared and foul, who profess to 
be above all sensibility or feeling for the sufferings and woes 
of other mortals. We are not satisfied with the patient and 
suffering toils of the poor brutes in contributing to our wants 
and pleasures, but we begrudge them the little God has given 
them. 

There is a lurking envy and even malice often found in the 
hearts of modern professors of religion, who most profanely 
arrogate to themselves every gift of Grod, and thus placing 
themselves above the contingencies of mortality, and the 
doubts of futurity look down with scowling contempt upon 
the gross feelings of God's outcast and neglected creatures, 
both of brute and man. It may or may not be that God has 
from all eternity determined to force some of his children to 
heaven, worthy or unworthy, and others to hell, guilty or not 
guilty, but this is as sure as that there is a God in heaven, 
that if any tyrant on earth were to establish a code of laws, 
or a court to hang without a crime, and to reward and honor 



128 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

murder, that the comiDon sense and good feeling of mankind — 
gross and brutal as that feeling might be — would rebel against 
such inequality and base injustice. 

I feel that it is a crime to disdain the natural and fixed 
laws of God, and to transcend the bounds he has set to 
human knowledge. For, if his revealed words be true, he 
looks upon all his works with pleasure, and as being of equal 
importance, and that he is to be found amidst his works on 
earth as well as in his celestial abodes, for God numbers the 
hairs upon our head, and suffers not a sparrow to fall to the 
ground without his notice. These visionary writers whom I 
have been combatting, remind me in their lofty and refined 
conceptions of the inebriate, who, in his tipsy joys, and bright 
and glorious conceptions, is lifted far above the vulgar and 
sober realities of life, and I think them as safe as exemplars 
and teachers of morality and religion as those superstitious 
monomaniacs. The heathen mythology and the legendary 
love of the darker ages were certainly entitled to as much 
respect and confidence as the metaphysical erudition of the 
present day, where men make Gods of themselves and divide 
their soaring minds into independent faculties and powers as 
numerous as the whole progeny of the Hindoo Gods. That 
our craniums have bumps like other bones, no anatomist will 
deny, but that they were all made for the purposes they are 
put to by phrenologists, no man of sense can believe, for every 
upstart in phrenology, like those in psychology, discovers his 
dozen new bumps, till the protuberances of the head are as 
numerous as those upon the surface of our globe. And from 
this vanity have the teachers of the science of mind run into 
the ridiculous extremes above related. 

That a well organized brain is better than a badly organ- 
ized one, cannot be doubted, and if phrenologists were to 
teach practically as do the Fowlers & Wells, and only to the 
extent for which nature has laid the foundation, much good 
might be done, in that simple and practical mode of iustriic- 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 129 

tion, which all can feel and understand. Speculative phreno- 
logy, on the contrary, like speculative religion, morality, and 
science in general, cannot be too much condemned. 

The doctrine I shall next maintain in regard to the power 
of material stimuli upon the mind in forming the character of 
the man, will doubtless be shocking to the delicate sensibilities 
of those fancy writers, who exclude all objective influences from 
the higher spheres of intellectual knowledge. That material 
excitants, both from without and within, may generate some of 
the noblest traits of human character will soon be seen. The 
stimulus of the seminal fluid, for instance, will make a man bold, 
daring, honest and honorable, and the depriving of the man of 
it will make him cowardly, thieving and insignificantly false. This 
is a well known fact in medical history, resting upon the obser- 
vation of thousands of cases. The character of the eunuch is 
well known and teaches more in the science of mind than all 
the imaginary books that have been written from the days of 
Plato to the present time; for as Comte justly ^says, "there has 
not, during all that time, been a single proposition agreed upon 
by the distracted and bewildered writers upon mind," while this 
proposition is as undeniable as it is prolific of important restflts. 
It is a key which, if properly turned, will unlock every secret 
of the human mind. In addition to the regular history of 
eunuchs, I will mention the case of Abelard and Eloisa, well 
known to the reading world. Abelard, one of the most re- 
nowned philosophers, divines and orators of Europe and the 
pride of France, was by his emasculation, almost demented and 
reduced to timidity and insignificance, so much so that instead 
of answering an adversary in a certain controversy, which he 
was ever wont to do in his brilliant days, he cravened down 
and sneaked under the pulpit. His desertion of his lovely 
Eloisa is a farther proof of a loss of love and gratitude as well 
as of intellect. Honorable love is as noble a trait as belongs 
to the human mind, and that it is begot by our animal organism, 
is as certain as any fact in physical science. For a man to love 



130 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

a man and be wedded to a man is contrary to God's appointed 
order of things and for the propagation of the species he has 
offered ample inducement. All history shows that the seminal 
stimuli has a powerful influence upon the character and destiny 
of man, so much so that there has rarely ever been a daring 
general, bold orator or great and persevering intellect that was 
not dependent upon it. From the days of David and Solomon, 
who are fair examples, to those of Mark Anthony and Julius 
Caesar, Cortez, Pizarro, Almagro, Bonaparte and Jackson, there 
has hardly been a conqueror of any note, who has not been so 
notoriously given to venerial passions as to be noticed in history, 
nor would any biographer herald such a trait in the character 
of his friend, were it not too well known to be withheld. AVash- 
ington has been given as an exception, being contrary to the 
established order of nature, and in the face of facts reported by 
his companions in arms, we do not entertain his case as any 
exception to the doctrine here maintained. Washington had 
no time to loiter in the amourous wiles of seductive courts, for 
his early life was spent in privations, hardships, hazards, and 
depressing cares, and where no temptations were offered and no 
time afforded for gallantry. Besides, there are many men of 
ardent passions, but of powerful fortitude aud resolution ample 
for an equipoised or paramount balance in the scale of morality. 
St. Paul, from his own records, was one of this class, being 
much annoyed by a thorn in his side, which nothing but the 
rewards of his eternal destiny could counteract. 

We will find the same stimulus acting upon the great orators 
and poets of the world in all ages, but more particularly upon 
those of our own country, most of whom have been arraigned from 
time to time before the public in our newspapers, as Solomons 
and Caesars in that way. It was said of Caesar that he was the 
husband of every woman in Rome, and Napoleon, in his con- 
versations with his biographers. Las Casas aud O'Meara, who 
relate the fact, said that "he sometimes thought of Paris as 
Caesar did of Rome, that he was the husband of all the women 



1 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 131 

in it." He, like George the Fourth of England, often went 
out in disguise and had his frolics in houses of rowdy resort. 
I know that Abbott, in his history, or rather his Romance of 
Kapoleon, aims with a sordid sycophancy, to cover every fault, 
even the common frailties, incident to mortahty. His hero, 
however, though not altogether mortal, became a prisoner, died 
and was not translated, but buried upon the island of St. 
Helena, which has marred in a mortifying degree his beautiful 
fiction. 

It is degrading, to be sure, that man should be classed 
amongst animals, but God has placed him there, and we cannot 
sunder him without flying in the face of heaven, so that we 
must treat of him philosophically, as God has made him ; and 
in so doing, show that he in many respects bears a close analogy 
to the next in grade below him. There are many analogous 
principles to be found in common belonging to both brute and 
man ; and this procreative stimulus above named, operates as 
powerfully upon the brute in the development both of form 
and action. The stallion, the bull, the boar, and the chicken- 
cock, for instance, are strong, bold, and fearless, compared with 
the eunuchs of their race ; and when stirred by the seminal 
stimuli, they will run days and nights without food or rest, 
when, if emasculated, they would lie torpidly and tamely at 
their ease. There has been great improvement of stock upon 
this very principle, for every observing farmer now-a-days knows 
that by breeding " in and in," the seminal stimuli, hke the con- 
stant application of any other specific stimulus to the same 
sensitivity, looses its effect and the stock degenerates, hence 
therefore, their custom of crossing breeds. 

I have said that this internal and organic power is a key 
to the phenomena of mind, and will expose more fully the folly 
of all past philosophy which refers most of our mental influences 
to supernatural powers, than any abstract reasoning which I 
could adduce. Metaphysicians seem to have but two divisions 
in the phenomena of mind, the external or objective world, an(i 



132 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the mind whicli they call the subjective world. Now all our 
ideas that do not come to the mind through the outward senses 
and from the objective world, are referred to higher and more 
spiritual sources of interminable mysticism or what, in their 
own language, they term '! a real, veritable and visible, spiritual 
world." Thus this religious fanaticism teaches that a large 
portion of the elements and powers of our reflective thoughts 
are from celestial spirits or whispering angels. Others, that 
our pure thoughts are furnished by an eternal phantasmagoria, 
or, as Plato had it in different language, they are species — 
forms or phantasms — the archetypes that have existed in the 
divine mind from all eternity, which distant time 1 take to be 
some considerable time before man, who claims those ideas, had 
any existence. I grant the lofty sublimity and overflowing 
beauty of these speculations, but sacred truth is so defaced and 
veiled by their mystic sublimations and spiritual re finings that 
there is nothing left in their attenuated forms visible and 
tangible for the mind to lay hold of or digest. It is like eating 
fog, which though etherial and far above the gross things of 
the earth, is so illy adapted to the organization God has given 
us that it can never sustain us or serve the practical purposes 
of life. Those doctrines, though pleasing to fancy, are so 
grossly and palpably false as to insult the common sense of 
man and provoke the reason which God has given him. 

Fearing the reader may think I am burlesquing in my 
representation of the almost universal teachings of moral philo- 
sophy, I will make a short quotation from Dr. Keid's " Intel- 
lectual Powers " of man in confirmation of all I have said. In 
speaking of the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato which have 
been remodelled and rechristened, but not changed, and are 
DOW the popular hypothesis of the schools, he says: "These 
images or forms impressed upon the senses are called sensible 
species, and are the objects only of the sensitive part of the 
mind," (I do wonder where that part of the mind is which has 
no sense I) "but by various internal powers they are retained, 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 133 

refined, and spiritualized so as to become objects of memory 
and imagination, and at last of pure intellection. When they 
are objects of memory and imagination, they get the name of 
phantasms. When, by farther refinement, and being stripped 
of their particularities, they become objects of science, and are 
called intelligible species, so that every immediate object — 
whether of sense or of memory — of imagination or of reasoning 
— must be some phantasm or species in the mind itself." Des- 
cartes changed the name of these strange things to that of 
ideas, and Hume, with more good sense and tangibility, to im- 
pressions. Thus we have seen how far a frenzied fanaticism 
may lead even great minds astray, and how dangerous it is to 
be governed by great names (great fools) and books of Utopian 
learning. All the errors in mental science, from the days of 
Plato to the present, and even back to that of Confucius and 
all other mystic leaders of the world, have grown out of our 
not understanding the laws of our own organism, and the vital 
and invisible functions upon which the mind is not only 
dependent for its mundane existence, but for its constant 
renewal and a large portion of its thoughts. The eagle, as 
lofty as may be his flights, has to return to earth for food and 
rest, but those aerial mystics float all the time between heaven 
and earth, and build their castles upon foundations as in- 
tangible and shifting as air itself If, instead of looking up 
for every element of intellection, they would look down and 
within themselves, they would find, as I have said, that our 
ideas are first obtained through our senses, and that from 
objectivity, or the world around us, and when thus engrafted, 
literally grow into bark, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit, 
while the roots spread far and deep by proper culture. The 
tree cannot grow and produce fruit without the materials 
which God has appointed to rear it from the very germ to its 
full maturity, and so it is with mind, that has a germ handed 
down from Adam — the first created man — yet it cannot en- 
large or become intelligent but by culture and the materials 



134 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

that must sustain it. This is the true nature of mind which 
is just as much dependent upon the elements of this world for 
its every idea as the tree is for its growth and fruit. As I 
have before illustrated, the mighty oak would remain forever 
no oak, or more properly without existence, but for the soil 
and the germinating elements around it. And as I have also 
shown in illustration of my position, the grains of wheat that 
have been taken from mummies found in the dark vaults of 
the pyramids of Egypt, three thousand years old, and have 
produced whole fields of wheat, would never have germinated 
but for the plastic and vivifying powers of objectivity. So 
also with the chicken, for instance, which but for the father 
would never have existed in the egg, and then, but for incuba- 
tion, would never have come to the world. Yet it must be 
understood, that those fortuitous agencies create nothing, for 
God in his power and wisdom placed the germ in all things 
which under his ordained laws were to bring forth of their 
kind. By way of further illustration we might say that the 
fire, elicited by friction from the cold wood and the spark 
produced by the collision of flint and steel, is no proof of the 
creation of fire, but simply the development of it by God's 
appointed laws. He has also seen proper to make the mind 
of man, the germ of which was planted by himself, dependent 
upon his physical laws, as the body or the vegetable kingdom, 
nor is it in the power of gilded books and arrogant pedagogues 
to contravene them. This must be granted, otherwise that the 
doctrine of transmigration is true, and consequently that it is 
the religious duty of Brigham Young's women — as he has 
piously enjoined it upon them — to bring forth as many chil- 
dren as possible, to accommodate those surplus souls that God 
has made perfect and set afloat without a habitation, and are 
only waiting for the bodies which those women have it in their 
power, by but little labor, to create. This injunction of the 
great and divine Brigham Young — the full-orbed sun of Mor- 
mon faith, and the controller of human minds — though greatly 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 135 

ridiculed by our public prints, is in full accordance witb the 
doctrines taught in all our religious schools, and to be found 
in almost every work upon mental philosophy, to wit: that the 
human mind is made perfect with all its ideas and abstract 
intelligence, and has no dependence upon the physical world, 
and thus it is that others have taught as well as Brigham 
Young, that souls are launched into the world, and go about 
hunting bodies just as a man would a house to inhabit for 
the time. 

If we would confine ourselves to the abhorred task of rea- 
son and the vulgar realities of life we could not but see that 
the mind is born with the body, that it is as childish and 
helpless as the body, knowing nothing of good or evil, or how 
to support its own existence, that it is nurtured and reared to 
maturity with the body, that it is subject to the frailties and 
diseases of the body, and that it sinks to infirmity and super- 
annuation with the body, and passes off from this stage of 
action with the body. Our senses, the only inlets of knowl- 
edge and the valid witnesses of the soul, have not made 
cognizable any influences other than the material world, and 
we feel that our spirits are buoyant by fullness of health, and 
that they are raised or sunk by prosperity and adversity. 
Spirits will make a wise man a fool, and laudanum will put 
the mind to sleep, while disease will set it raving or reduce it 
to melancholy and almost dementation. 

My views here given of the analogy of mind and body are 
not for the purpose of inculcating the doctrine of the materia- 
lity of the soul, but to bring us to our senses, that we may see 
the fixed and eternal relation of things, just as God did in his 
first creation ordain them. I as firmly believe in the imma- 
teriality of the soul as I do in my own existence, yet the ma- 
terialistic doctrine does not alarm or make me unhappy, for, 
be it material or immaterial, we know that it feels pleasure 
and pain in this life, it can do no more nor less in the next. 
It would be a safe and selfish doctrine with many, that all 



136 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

sensation of the soul is to be 'extinguished with the death of 
the body. 
But, 

" Lost in earth, or air, or main, 
Kindred atoms meet again! Glorious resurrection! " 

T^e should not feel unhappy, either about mind or body, 
for that almighty power which brought myriads of glittering 
worlds from black chaos, and formed this vast and gorgeous 
universe, can as easily make matter as spirit eternal. Then 
let us not loose sight of God's sacred truth in vain search 
after the philosopher's stone, but put up with things as things 
are made, and doubting nothing evil, leave results to God 
himself. But the unstaid perversity and^ incorrigible vanity 
of man keeps him in perpetual strife against his allotment, 
and transcending the bounds of nature, seeks knowledge and 
happiness in the regions of beguiling fantasy. The number 
and nature of the refining and sublimating faculties that con- 
vert the raw materials of the mind into spiritual phantasms, 
is still a grave and unanswered question, but perhaps will be 
better understood when we shall be wise enough to tell what 
becomes of all the old moons when the new ones appear. 
Upon abstract philosophy, as Dr. Reid says, " many systems 
have been invented, and heated controversies kept up for ages 
past without anything satisfactory being ascertained." Dr. 
Reid, however, goes on to say that notwithstanding the wild 
theories and interminable disputations, that several additions 
have been made to the Aristotelean and Platonic doctrines 
of perception, but, as far as I can see, modern philosophy has 
only added ghost to ghost, and left the subject as formless, 
viewless, and intangible as ever. I am utterly unable to 
conceive of what they mean by images in the mind, for in- 
stance, what kind of image can heat, cold, sound, smell, or 
taste present ? These are mere sounds, and absolutely with- 
out meaning. It may seem incredible to the unobserving 
reader that men of great intellects should write books founded 
upon such follies, and yet when he considers that 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 13t 

"Great wit to madness sure is oft allied, 
And thin partitions do their bounds divide " 

he will not be surprised that such is the case. Besides, if he 
will recollect that with his own mind, he has seen fashions 
that at first were formless and even forbidding which by time 
and the taste of others became beautiful, and that the voice 
and manner in a friend may be charming one day, and yet 
from disagreement and hatred disgusting by the next, and yet 
the person remain identically the same, and thus it is that all 
speculations, both in religion and philosophy, are subject to 
the whims of prejudice and the contingencies of fashion in 
whatever isms or dogmatisms we may have been taught, and 
the example of local churches, society, and neighborhoods in 
which we are reared or live, hence the necessity of watching 
the vascillations of our own minds, for history has shown that 
we are all monomaniacs, and that there is no form of religion 
too foul and deformed, or Gods too numerous or too corrupt for 
our sincere belief and humble worship. 

We have but to refer to classic days to see that wiser 
heads than ours worship the most corrupt Gods that ever dis- 
graced the name of religion. But of all the Christians in our 
country none so fully put in practice the doctrines of modern 
philosophy as our neighbor "Shakers," many of whom visit 
heaven in person, and converse face to face with God and the 
inmates of heaven, and particularly with General Geo. Wash- 
ington, who has told them many things not to be found in the 
history of his life, and it is supposed that they will soon bring 
out a true history of that great man. Those of our Shaker 
brethren who do not go to the spirit-land in person after 
metaphysical phantasms, have trances, visions, and direct 
communications through invisible spirits, proving more fully 
than any teaching could do that the doctrines in our school- 
philosophy are true. Now these facts are not given by way 
of ridicule to our spiritual philosophers, but to open their eyes 
to their own extreme folly, for I cannot believe that any sen- 



138 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

sible man out of the Church can have faith in such wild fana- 
ticism. These people, strictly guarding non-intercourse, know 
by the rising of a rebellious member when the devil is near to 
tempt them, as they say he did Adam to enjoy Eve, they at 
once, with pious heroism, male and female, surround the old 
serpent, and the women flirting their petticoats in his face, 
"shew^' him on, while the men with their brandishing rods 
rush him headlong down the Kentucky cliifs, and into the 
river he has been seen to plunge. Now as ridiculous as all 
this may seem, it controls the minds of many of our fellow- 
beings, who are just as sane as ourselves, and certainly by far 
more rational than many of our modem book-mukers, whose 
minds are as celestially excursive as those of the Shakers. 

The whole secret of the chaotic mass of folly to be found 
in the textbooks of our schools, is that the writers and teachers 
of mental philosophy are of the same family of fallible beings 
with the Shakers and all other fanatics, and that their minds 
are like theirs perpetually prone to transcend the bounds of 
reason by yielding to the delusive and elysian emotions of soul. 
If we will cast aside the wild vagaries of imagination, and 
sternly follow God's established order of things, our souls will 
be elevated in the true channel of knowledge, and be rendered 
invulnerable to the machinations of erring man. Sensationalism 
is the platform upon which the ieaver must rest to move the 
world and set it aright. It is the foot-stand of the intellectual 
ladder that reaches from earth to heaven — yes, and the main- 
spring of the whole machinery of mind. The secret, as I have 
said, of all the erroneous teachings in the mental government 
of man, is in the internal workings of the mind. Feeling a 
number of recurring thoughts running through the mind, and 
being conscious that they are not the objects of sense, or more 
properly that they did not at the moment felt, as in the dark- 
ness and silence of night, come through our senses, some have 
referred them to spiritual communications from God, and others 
to etherial agencies. It may seem hard to believe, yet no 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 139 

reading and intelligent man will dare deny that the greatest 
intellects of modern times have taught that there do exist 
eternal and immutable ideas which were prior to the objects 
of sense, and that they come to us contingently and inde- 
pendently of any established or fixed laws of causality. And 
this is the doctrine, I repeat, that has led mental science so 
shamefully astray, and cast an odium on the very name of 
metaphysics. Every phenomenon of mind may easily be ac- 
counted for from the internal workings of our animal organisms. 
For instance, when our bowels disturb us we .dream of stooling, 
if hungry, of eating, and if thirsty, of water and drinking, and 
so with all our dreams, it matters not how celestial, for the ten 
thousand nervous disturbances within us when asleep will stir 
up by associations all and every thought we ever had. Where, 
then, the necessity of spiritual and prompting agents to direct 
us to stooling, urinating, or the innumerable other stirrings up 
of past thoughts and actions. It is simply the circulation of 
our nervous fluids instead of ministering angels supposed to 
creep through the dark windings of the nerves to the sensorium 
communi to whisper folly to us. Our hearts contract with great 
violence, and the fluids flow to and from it like the streams of 
earth to their great fountain, the Ocean, while digestion, ab- 
sorption, assimilation, with the pulmonary respiration, and ten 
thousand other vitalizing and moving agencies are flashing 
like lightning corruscations throughout the living miracle inde- 
pendent of our senses and ungoverned by our wills. From 
this secret and unconscious source is prompted ninetenths of 
our mental exercises, and when morbid agencies assail those 
normal functions, mental derangement in all its varied forms 
may ensue. Many of our dreams that come true, and all the 
omens and prescience that man has, are from this source, and 
it is worthy of serious consideration how often we predict a 
spell of sickness, death, and other events. The incipient stage 
of a fatal disease may be preying upon the vitals, and disturb- 
ing the nerves and mental associations long before it is suffi- 



140 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ciently developed for external notice. These internal laws of 
the animal economy, which influence the mind in all its varied 
phases, have never been studied or understood, and why? — 
simply, as I have often repeated in this work, because the 
religious teachers of this world are in possession of all the 
schools, where generation after generation receive its false in- 
struction to look without and far beyond this vulgar tenement 
of clay and its gross animal senses for all its knowledge and 
impulses of soul. To tell such teachers that a full stomach 
makes a generous soul, and that a dyspeptic stomach carries 
many a Divine with all his high-sounding but unavailing knowl- 
edge down to dementation and even death, will not stay their 
soaring fancies, but looking with contempt upon all gastric and 
physical agencies, they will still teach the doctrine of a special 
providence, and of spiritual influences over the health, and hap- 
piness of man. The loss of friends, and the melancholy ex- 
amples daily before their eyes will not convince them that 
God's providence is not in his special visits and partial favors, 
but in his fixed and irrevocable laws, under which he has 
placed us, and that our ignorance of these laws is no plea of 
exemption from the consequences, as sickness, misery, and 
death. But still they run counter, by sedentary habits and by 
vain and delusive hopes, to every law of health, and still they 
cry: Lord save! The drunkard may, with equal consistency, 
and with no greater criminal presumption, violate the laws of 
his own constitution and cry: God save! 

All the magnetic, mesmeric and psychological exhibitions 
arise from the internal laws of our constitution, and from the 
same source comes somnambulism and somniloqnism, with the 
endlessly varied and fantastic emotions of soul. The mind may 
be likened to a mechanic's shop, where every material must first 
be made by God himself, and then come in through the senses or 
the doors of the shop, but when there, the workmen within, like 
the soul, can turn his materials to many shapes and put them 
to many purposes, and give them endless names, as chairs, tables 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 141 

and bureaus, but neither the mechanic nor the mind has any 
power to create its own materials. Our senses are the only valid 
witnesses and legitimate arbiters of truth, for when they are 
locked up by sleep, our minds run wildly astray by internal dis- 
turbences, but awake the senses and they at once tell us that 
the feelings which possessed us a moment before, were not in 
the order in which they were originally received. The kindred 
relations and established order of nature, as first perceived, 
must be strictly guarded by the senses, or all our ideas soon 
loose their integrity and take the name of visions, phantacies 
and vagaries of endless forms. In mesmeric and psychologic 
experiments there is a partial mastery yet held by the senses, 
the imperfect sleep or stupor not being quite suflBcient to check 
the nervous currents, but simply to confuse them, as in cases 
of somnambulism and somniloquism, where the subject both 
walks and talks in his sleep, yet cannot fully compare facts and 
detect errors, as when his senses are sound and fully awake. A 
man psychologized can both see and hear, yet the comparing 
power is actually lulled to sleep, so that when the subject is 
told it is raining, it is hot, it is cold, it is dark or light, and he 
will agree to it, and to throw a stick before him and exclaim it 
is a snake, and he will run from it. The word snake excites the 
former idea of snake, and, of course, alarms. This state of mind 
is similar to one with mania-a-potu, where the subjects sees 
snakes and other delusive objects. 

The mind may also be compared to a violinist, who lives seper- 
ate and independent of his violin, but who cannot make music 
without it, and even if the violin be perfect and the strings be 
cut or broken, he cannot make harmony — and so with the mind, 
that may live independent of the body and brain which it in- 
habits, yet without the brain its instrument, and the nerves that 
vibrate and give tone and harmonious action, it could not de- 
velope and exhibit its powers to the world, and when the nerves 
be severed, or the brain concussed or depressed, the violinist is 
not dead, but his instrument is destroyed. 



142 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

To confirm the doctrine I have aimed to establish, to wit, 
that all our ideas are brought to the soul through our senses, I 
will make but one or two short quotations from Upham's 
" Mental Philosophy." 

" In the history of our original intellectual acquisitions the 
following is given in the Memoirs of the French Academy of 
Sciences for the year 1703, of a deaf and dumb young man in 
the city of Chartres. At the age of three-and-twenty, it so 
happened, to the great surprise of the whole town, that he was 
suddenly restored to the sense of hearing, and in a short time 
he acquired the use of language. Deprived for so long a time 
of a sense, which in importance ranks with the sight and the 
touch, unable to hold communion with his fellow-beings by 
means of oral or written language, and not particularly com- 
pelled, as he had every care taken of him, by his friends and 
relations, to bring his faculties into exercise, the powers of his 
mind remained without having opportunity to unfold themselves. 
Being examined by some men of discernment, it was found that 
he had no idea of a God, of a soul, of the moral merit or de- 
merit of human actions, and what might seem to be yet more 
remarkable, he knew not what it was to die ; the agonies of 
dissolution, the grief of friends, and the ceremonies of inter- 
ment being to him inexplicable mysteries. Here we see how 
much knowledge a person was deprived of, merely by his want- 
ing the single sense of hearing ; a proof that the senses were 
designed by our Creator to be the first source of knowledge, 
and that without them, the faculties of the soul would never be- 
come operative." 

Thus we see what Upham, though a servile copyist, has said 
at the close of his quotation, in regard to the importance of our 
senses. He is, from this single fact, worth more in the develop, 
ment of God's established relations in the laws of mentality, 
than all the trashy books that have ever been published ; forced 
to admit the fact which I am striving to establish, that all our 
knowledge must first come through our senses. In Upham's 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 143 

own language, as seen above, " the soul without the senses 
would never become operative." This is going very far, for a 
dull and modish mystic. A number of such cases, which power- 
fully appeal from idle hypotheses to common sense facts, might 
be collected both from physiological and metaphysical writers, 
in full illustration and confirmation of all I have said ; but pre- 
suming that the cases I have given with my varied arguments 
upon the subject of sensation and perception being both the 
substratum and ultimatum of all our external knowledge, will 
prove satisfactory to the reader, I will not trouble him farther 
with tedious quotations, except a single one to show, how our 
sensations and thoughts are stirred up and again brought before 
the mind by association. 

The well known Chateaubriand, writes thus : "When travel- 
ing through the wilds of America, I was not a little surprised 
to hear that I had a countryman established as a resident at 
some distance in the woods. I visited him with eagerness, and 
found him' employed in painting some stakes at the door of his 
hut. He cast a look towards me which was cold enough, and 
continued his work ; but the moment I addressed him in French, 
he started at the recollection oi" his country, and the big tear 
stood in his eye. These well known accents suddenly roused in 
the heart of the old man all the sensations of his infancy !" 
Were I not wearied with the subject, I would bring up many 
additional illustrations both from history and from every-day 
observation, in farther proof of the power of association, and 
the sixth sense as I call it, or internal functional agency in re- 
producing thought, if farther proof could be deemed necessary. 

Thus we have seen that there is neither innate nor superna- 
tural ideas belong to the natural mind, but that all knowledge 
first comes through sensation and perception, and that every 
after thought is produced either by association from kindred re- 
lations, or sameness of sounds, sights, touch, smell or taste, 
through the five senses or by means of our sixth sense, in other 
words, our internal functional excitations ; and further, that 



144 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

these simple, unmistaken and unalterable laws, ordained by God 
himself, does away the necessity of whole chapters of extra 
powers and faculties, and the study of huge volumes of mystic 
and alchemic nonsense. Our gross ignorance of our own con- 
stitutions has given rise to swarms of licensed butchers and to 
innumerable contraband and self-styled imposters, of high and 
low degree, from faith-doctors, and patent pillers, down to urin- 
ary tasters and alaine smellers ; while the abstract and com- 
plicated teachings of mental science has kept mankind ignorant 
of their own minds, and sustained a despotic and oppressive 
hierarchy which has filched countless millions of money from the 
pockets of the toiling masses, who prefer to pay for a prescrib- 
ed religion from man, rather than to obtain it from God him- 
self, by a life of simple honesty and sincere piety. These are 
melancholy facts — yes, they are facts of the most lamentable 
grievous and portentous import ; for the exposure of which, I 
may look for the common lot of all who may attempt to sus- 
tain the honor of God, and protect the interest of man, by de- 
throning the pseudo-gods of earth, and correcting the abuses of 
society ; yet will I do my duty, by giving to man his true cha- 
racter, looking with the eye of faith beyond the confines of earth 
to a court of eternal and immutable truth and justice for my 
reward. 

I cannot close this article without saying that I have as 
much respect for divines, politicians and physicians, as their 
craven and hypocritical flatterers, yet I cannot, as an observ- 
ing man, but see it, and as an honest man, to make it known, 
that there is a sad and criminal amount of ignorance and dis- 
honesty amongst them. There is not a politician in our land 
who will tell the people of their dissipated habits, and of the 
great sin they commit by selling God's greatest blessing to man 
at the polls, for even less than thirty pieces of silver, the price of 
our Saviour's liberty and life, in which cases the vender of votes 
is equally as criminal in the eyes of God, as he who betrayed 
His life. Yet where is there a leader of the people honest enough 



SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 145 

to tell thera of it. And more alarming still — where is the po- 
litician who will not bribe souls to their own damnation and to 
the ruin of their country. And a question I am sorry to ask 
is, where can we find the Divine in modern high life, who exhib- 
its a concentrated, sincere, and humble devotion to the cause 
of religion ? And where, where, I with religious duty ask, 
can you find a professor in fashionable life, who does not set 
the worst possible example of costly dressing and of being for- 
most in every species of extravagance, parade and criminal folly ? 
And who can say that we do not in our insignia of honor, and 
in our church paraphernalia view with the paradeful days of Pa- 
pal power. Such vain glory may bloom but can never bear but 
the bitterest fruit which we all have tasted. I look back with 
horror upon the melancholy march of man through the dark and 
bloody ages of the past, nor can I look forward with any better 
hopes for the future. The bloody sword is unsheathed and 
."Time is as rife on earth as ever. Nation wars with nation 
and man with man — the midnight dagger and the burglar's 
hands are bold in their daring deeds, while frauds and seductions 
have become the order of the day — brother cheats brother, and 
neighbor overreaches neighbor in his contracts, and shamelessly 
boasts of his smartness. Then blame me not, but for my fruit- 
less efforts to correct these abuses in society. And now I close 
this article, with the hope that the Clergy particularly, who I 
have strove to improve and aid at every turn, will feel the same 
brotherly love for me that I do for them. This is my unfained 
feeling and humble prayer before the searcher of hearts and the 
final judge of all on earth. 



VOLITION. 



I WILL here premise that my reason for being more ilhistra- 
tive and lengthy upon the subject of will, than that of any other 
mode of mental action is that the world for woe or for weal has 
ever been governed by opinion or will, which is nothing more 
than the effect — forced result or sequence of opinion. And 
again, of all our feehngs there is none so deceptive and that re- 
quires so much close thought as our feeling of liberty in the 
promptings and exercises of will. It is like fever, the actual 
existence and feehng of which every man is conscious, yet no 
one traces back the antecedent causes, or can, but by inference, 
detect the proximate or remote cause of such feeling. The 
cold may have been caught or measma breathed months before 
the sensible effects, and that in some remote region of which 
we are not conscious. A man in vigorous health may be con- 
scious of his strength of muscle and boyancy of spirits, and yet 
unconscious of his interna] and vital functions as digestion, assi- 
milation, nutrition, and other remote but causal renewing powers 
The sun as it strikes our senses, is a little lamp that goes round 
this world to light it up, and it was once as universally believed, 
as free will now is, that the sun and starry heavens revolved 
around this earth which has the sensible appearance of being a 
flat and fixed surface. Heaven-born reason, however, has dis- 
pelled many of those time-hallowed but vulgar superstitious il- 
lusions, of a Racred consciousness. This feeling or conscious- 
ness of being free to will what we will, or do what we do, is of 
all other feelings the most deceptive and mischievous. That 
we can will what we will, and do what we do, is certain, or we 
could not will what we will and do what we do, but it is 



VOLITION. 147 

equally certain, that we are no more conscious of nor have no 
more control over, the antecedent and remote agencies that 
causes the desire to do or not to do, than we have over the 
normal and abnormal conditions of our vital functions. 



Much has been said and written for past ages in regard to 
the human will. The question has been whether the will* acts 
under the influence of mortals, or in other words, the prompt- 
ings of subject presented to the mind for its choice, or whether 
it has self-controlling power to act independent of all mortals. 
Various definitions have been given to this subject, and yet no 
agreement has been consented to by parties. Locke defines 
the will to be nothing more than "the ability to prefer or 
choose." In this I think all must agree, that it is simply the 
choice of one thing rather than another, for we cannot choose 
a thing contrary to our will, nor will a thing contrary to our 
choice. My position is, that God has so constructed us, and 
connected soul and body, that they have no independent exist- 
ence here, and that they are as much under. the laws of causal- 
ity as his physical universe. But sever this glorious harmony 
of mutual dependencies from the throne of the great Architect, 
and this world in common with all worlds, now holding their 
courses in lawful obedience to the divine will, would become 
a wreck. In like manner would our animal organism and in- 
tellectual and moral dependencies upon the will of God become 
an entity or a non-entity as chaoce by chance might determine. 
To quote authority for and against this subject would make a 
large and profitless book, of abstract refinings and technical 
nonsense, and I will therefore introduce a few sentences only, 
from the pen of Sir William Hamilton, the greatest and best of 
modern and Christian philosophers. 

" Will, they hold to be a free cause, a cause which is not 
an effect ; in other words, they attribute to it a power of ab- 
solute origination. But here their own principle of causality 
is too strong for them. They say that it is unconditionally 



148 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

promulgated, as an express and positive law of intelligence, 
that every origination is an apparent only, not a real, com- 
mencement. How to exempt certain phenomena from this 
universal law, on the ground of our moral consciousness, can 
not validly be done. For in the first place, this would be an 
admission that the mind is a complement of contradictory re- 
velations. If mendacity be admitted of some of our mental 
dictates, we can not vindicate veracity to any. If one be de- 
lusive, so may all. ' Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.^ Abso- 
lute skepticism is here the legitimate conclusion. But, in the 
second place, waving this conclusion, what right have we, on 
this doctrine, to subordinate the positive affirmation of causal- 
ity to our consciousness of moral liberty — what right have we, 
for the interest of the latter to derogate from the former ? 
We have none. If both be equally positive, we are not en- 
titled to sacrifice the alternative, which our wishes prompt us 
to abandon." (Page 586.) " How the will can possibly be 
free, must remain to us, under the present limitation of our 
faculties, wholly incomprehensible. We are unable to con- 
ceive an absolute commencement ; we cannot therefore con- 
ceive a free volition. A determination by motives can not, to 
our understanding, escape from necessitation. Nay, were we 
even to admit as true, what we can not think as possible, still 
the doctrine of a motiveless volition would be only casualism ; 
and the free acts of an indifferent, are, morally and rationally, 
as worthless as the pre-ordered passions by a determined will. 
How, therefore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible in man or 
God, we are utterly unable speculatively to understand.'^ 

Thus we see in accordance with my position, that in the 
above language " it is impossible to conceive of a free volition," 
and again, " how the will can possibly be free, is to our facul- 
ties wholly incomprehensible, and the reason he gives is truly 
philosophical, "that we can not conceive of absolute commence- 
ment," that is, the beginning of the series of causes that un- 
avoidably brings about the result. This argument, in a word, 



VOLITION. 149 

incontestably confirms that of Jonathan Edwards, the great- 
est of Divines and the most powerful of reasoners : "that no- 
thing can not produce something, and as we cannot, therefore, 
see how those volitions came into existence save by the prompt- 
ings of motives, of which we are subjects, from hour to hour, 
we must trace back along the chain of causality, how one link, 
or will, has got up and moved another will, in infinitum, and 
as the last will is not a self-created being from nothing, but 
had a prior cause, cannot but be a result of something, there- 
fore not free." 

Upham, in his " Mental Philosophy," page 265, when 
speaking of mental emotions, writes as follows : " We are at 
first pleased or displeased, or have some other emotion in view 
of the thing, whatever it is, which has come under the cogni- 
zance of the intellect. And emotions, in the ordinary process 
of mental action, are followed by desires. As we cannot be 
pleased or displeased without some antecedent perception 
Or knowledge of the thing which we are pleased or dis- 
pleased with, so we cannot desire to possess or avoid anything, 
without having laid the foundation of such desire in the exist- 
ence of some antecedent emotion. And this is not only the 
matter of fact which, as the mind is actually constituted, is 
presented to our choice, but we can not well conceive how it 
could be otherwise. To desire a thing which utterly €ails to 
excite within us the least emotion of pleasure, seems to be a 
sort of solecism or absurdity in nature : in other words, it 
seems to be impossible, from the nature of thing, under any 
conceivable circumstances. At any rate, it is not possible, as 
the mind is actually constituted, whatever might have been the 
fact, if the mind had been constituted differently." 

Thus did this author, in one of his lucid moments, argue 
the case justly. But soon did he, like Hamilton, craven to the 
cry of fatalism, and abandoning sacred reason, fall back 
into the interminable vortex of superstitious mysticism — a 
divine conscience. 



150 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

It is to avoid the Gorgan phantom, this scare-crow word 
fatalism, that authors have traiterously abandoned the sacred 
Laws of God, grounded in our constitutions and in the kindred 
and causal relations of all things, and thus reduced mental 
science to that contempt which iu its present dark and vacil- 
lating condition it justly deserves. 

To reach the throne of our Creator, through his unerring 
laws of causality, is to break from the strong bands of clerical 
authority, and hence it is taught by all theological institutions 
to be dangerous in its tendencies. ^ And hence it is that our 
teachers and preachers cry out skepticism, and hold that a 
divine mysticism, which has distracted the world and caused 
brother to drag brother fiendishly to the stake, is the only sure 
and tithing faith for the duped and demented masses of man- 
kind. 

Astronomy was to destroy the Bible faith, and therefore 
to be kept down, in darkness and doubt. 

The science of geology was to contradict the mosaic ac- 
count of creation, and a true and kind-hearted morality, as 
founded upon the harmonious laws of our own constitutions, 
was to be stifled by the many-headed monster, superstition, 
and human idolatry that creates innumerable leaders, and calls 
and livings for all. 

Bui to proceed : — Every rational being acts with a view 
to some end, and his desire for this end is just as certainly the 
exciting cause, of will and action, as the moving of a body 
is the result of something that moves it, and the contraction 
of the heart the effect of the stimulus of the blood within it. 
I can no more conceive of a will begetting itseif than of a 
child begetting itself. Both require parents, and those other 
parents on and on through the series of ages to the first man, 
Adam, from God's own hand. 

We may as well look for new spontaneous and self-created 
animals, in violation of Jehovah's harmonious order and causal 
dependencies of all things as to grant the accidents of selfr 



VOLITION". 151 

creations of the human will. I hold that nothing can act be- 
fore it is, — that is, when it is not and where it is not; and it is 
equally absurd to admit that the will can create itself or move 
itself without an antecedent existence, or something that 
causes it and brings it forward. To say that the will is very- 
different from other things, and that in its own fiat, and self- 
creating power, it can bring forth without a parent, can act 
without a motive, choose without a choice, and prefer without 
a preference, is to talk nonsense, and say nothing in support 
of such miracles. All things are different from each other, — ■ 
no two in the wide world alike ; and yet they have their laws 
stamped upon them from creation, that under certain condi- 
tions each shall bring forth of its own kind. Every thing 
in God's boundless universe is "sui generis," and in other 
words it is what it is and nothing else. And the myriad 
of ideas that are impressed upon us are linked results of those 
objects. It is from the necessary existence of these laws that 
the mind can regularly step from effect to cause, on and on, 
to the existence of a God. And it is this, and this alone, that 
enables us to infer the future from the past, and to know that 
we are identically what we are, and not by whim of causality, 
another from day to day. Fearing that I may be accused 
of unfairness in my quotations from Sir William Hamilton, 
who, when reasoning as a philosopher, not only grants but 
with the hardihood of true inductiveness, vociferously aflBrms 
all I have or may say, I here acknowledge that he to escape 
the consequences of truth like Galileo, cravens to the un- 
founded and mischievous dogma of Christian writers, that the 
doctrine of Necessity compromises good and evil, and destroys 
future rewards and punishments. So that after proving 
demonstratively that the will is under the laws of Necessity, 
and going so far as to say that it is impossible in the nature 
of things that it should be free, he having no argument in the 
negative, gets out of the dilemma by bringing up a lying wit- 
ness to disprove all his own arguments, as he says himself 



152 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

"unanswerable, and the contrary of which the human mind is 
absolutely incapable of conceiving." After all this, however, 
he closes his remarks by marshalling an empirious and para- 
mount consciousness, which declares that we are free agents. 
And thus it is that we are to prove all things by faith, and 
not by reason. But it will be shown elsewhere that this thing 
of faith or conscience is a lying scund — a mere parasite — a 
creature of circumstances, and that we have more false faiths 
in the various religions and opinions of the world than true 
ones. But to be done with faith for the present, we will return 
to the argument, upon which alone a rational and lasting 
faith can be founded. 

All actions proceed from definite and uniform laws, of our 
unavoidable nature, and just as rational would it be to aflBrm 
that the results or effects of will are free as that the will itself 
is free, as it must be the subject of something that operates 
upon it changing from time to time, and causing it to be iden- 
ticaUy what it is. The muscles are free to act, yet forced to 
act in obedience to the will, and the will itself is free and yet 
forced to act by the impulse — its antecedent and prompting 
power. The billiard ball in like manner is free to act when 
struck with sufficient force by another, and this may strike 
and freely move a third, and so on. But when we look back, 
we will find that the motive put the first will in motion, and 
that the mace or cue put the first ball in motion. As well 
might we attempt to think without an object of thought as to 
act without a motive to act. There is a fixed and uniform 
relation between motive and action empirious and indissoluble 
as the connection of cause and effect. It is a law of mentality 
that the desire is always prompted by the motive, and deed 
will always follow the desire, and here I make my stand-point 
in this long agitated and perplexing controversy : one party 
has ever contended for what is vulgarly called the freedom of 
the will, while the other party that it has no freedom of action 
save from an antecedent and propelling power. Both are 



VOLITION. 153 

right, and both are wrong. Each according to their own 
meaning of the word freedom, and I think that my position 
and explanation will satisfy both parties of the fact. When 
asserted by a free-wilier that we can do as we will, see proper, 
or dispose, choose, prefer, desire, have our inclination, or mind 
to do, he is right ; and why ? Simply because we witness the 
unvariable result ; the deed in accordance with a menial law, 
as before stated, following the desire. 

Let us now, by familiar example and by the observation of 
common sense, test the thing and see how it will work out. 
The free- wilier says exultingly to a necessarian: it is folly, sir, 
to spend your breath in the advocation of a cause so repulsive 
to my intuitive convictions. Why, sir, I am now sitting and 
desire to rise and walk, don't you see I can do it, and look 
here, I willed to extend my arm, and now to flex it, and it is 
done. Truly it is, and all according to the will or desire so to 
do, and here rests my strong position against the freedom of 
the will, as understood in vulgar parlance. For example, one 
man says, the sun rises and sets, and another denies it, they 
are both right and both wrong, each according to their own 
meaning of the word. The sun, as it strikes the senses, and 
as commonly understood, rises and sets, yet strictly and astro- 
nomically speaking, it does not. The sun being actually a 
fixed centre, and its apparent motion round the earth nothing 
more than the earth's diurnal motion on its own axis, thus the 
parties did not fully define their position. Books upon books 
might be written upon the mistake in the meaning of a single 
word or sentence, as has been done upon the word, freedom of 
will, one party affirming, and the other denying. 

If we could voluntarily act contrary to our desire or will, 
then, indeed, would we be free, but so long as we are forced to 
act in accordance with the promptings of the will or desire, are 
we under the law of necessity, or, in other words, our unavoid- 
able nature, for there is not a being on earth, brute or human, 
but what is endowed with a susceptibility of pleasure and pain. 



164 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

from which necessarily arises desire and aversion, and con- 
sequently will to do or not to do according to circumstances. 
Thus it must now appear to every reader that there is no 
rational possibility of a denial, but that we can do as we will, 
please, desire, or see proper, and, moreover, that such is the 
fixed and immutable relation or tie between desire and action, 
that no man can voluntarily act contrary to his will or wish so 
to do. This indissoluble link, then, between the desire and the 
deed, being established, it only remains to show how this will, 
the cause of all human action, is got up, and whether it be a 
self-created, self-controlling and independent entity in violation 
of all the laws and causal dependencies throughout God's 
universe, or a fated link in the immutable and eternal chain of 
causality. Will is not a real, substantial and lasting entity, 
any more than a shadow, which has no existence seperate and 
apart from its substance, or fever, or any other condition of 
system that depends upon its cause. Love, though powerful 
even to death, cannot exist seperate from the object of love 
that begets it, and may be transformed by the force of circum- 
stances to hatred, and so with all our other passions and emo- 
tions, which rise and sink for ever like the ripples upon a 
troubled stream, one hour placid and the next perplexed. 
These ripples cannot beget themselves but are produced by 
external causes, and just so it is with all our desires, passions, 
and emotions of soul, which succeed each other like waves of 
the ocean, rising and subsiding by the renewed force of circum- 
stances. We hunger and desire food; we thirst and desire 
water; we are kindly treated and love the object, cruelly 
treated, and hate it. If cold, we approach the fire, because 
pleasurable, but if we get into it we seek to escape, because 
it is painful, and just so it is with the myriad feelings and con- 
sequent actions throughout life, each and every object pro- 
ducing its specific effect upon our sensibihties, just as plainly 
as vinegar tastes sour and sugar sweet, or that calumel purges 
and tartar pukes, simply because God has so ordered it. This 



VOLITION. 155 

is the doctrine of fatality or necessity over which man has no 
control, and from which there is no escape, but by subverting 
the mandates of heaven and the eternal fitness of things, 

A man to know that he acts from the strongest motive at 
the moment he does act, has but to feel his own regrets at past 
acts of his life, and farther to see his friends even commit sui- 
cide to avoid a long li% of hopeless degradation and misery, 
from irrevocable deeds which he would not for the world now 
commit. Every passion and emotion of soul, from the fondest 
love to the feilest hate, and from the purest feelings of philan- 
thropy to the sordid grasp of venality, has its motive object 
that as certainly begets the will as that the parent begets the 
child, and the cause its unavoidable effect. Thus it will be 
seen that the motive begets the will, and the will begets the 
deed, and farther, that as the motive is prior to and inde- 
pendent of the will, the will can no more create the motive or 
author of its being, than a child can beget its parent, or an 
effect create its cause. This, then, being a settled point, we 
will now illustrate how it is that there can be no will without 
a choice, and no choice without an object of choice, and as this 
object of choice prompts the will to choose, such will cannot in 
the nature of things be free. For example, we come to a 
precipice of a thousand feet, to the ocean or to a great river; 
these objects create a desire or will to avoid them. We find 
a treasure in the road, and at once there is a will to pick it up, 
or we are cold or belated, and see a fire, there is a will that 
moves us to it. We are in bed and wearied with one position, 
there is the will to turn this way and that way, or stretch 
ourselves out at length, as ennui may prompt the will to do. 
We sit down to eat, and this dish, that dish or other may be- 
come the motive to action, and thus many wills be created, and 
the many muscles of cutting, eating, and swallowing put into 
motion. In dictating, in writing, the hand obeys the will, and 
executes its myriad desires to the letter, but the subject of all 
this writing and the object to be obtained was the author or 



156 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

parent of every thought and action, for it must be seen that we 
cannot think without an object of thought, nor write without 
something to write about. It has been said that in as much 
as all men do not act identically alike from identically the 
same given motives, that the will must have some liberty aside 
from its motive, but a shght observation of facts will show that 
this objection to the doctrine of necessity is a shallow and 
glaring shift, unprotected even by the shadow of science. We 
might, with equal propriety, say that digestion has a liberty, 
and is not governed by necessary laws, because the same food 
does not equally agree with, or act alike upon all men. Medi- 
cine that claims no powers of vohtion, sees proper like the will 
to act very differently upon different persons. A given quan- 
tity of spirits will intoxicate one man, and not be felt by an- 
other, and more than this, it will make some furious and others 
friendly, shewing plainly that it is just as free as the will to 
act by its own whims. A bubble of wind in the bowels may 
unconsciously so act upon our nervous sensibilities, as to give 
us sleepless and thoughtful hours, and often leads the mind to 
deep meditation and solemn devotion. And more than this, 
such gaseous excitations, as vulgar as they may seem, may, 
during the silent and sleepless watch of night, fill the mind 
with a most beautiful and poetic strain of imaginations. 
Females, thus affected, will laugh, cry, sing, and pray almost 
in the same sentence. This form of neuralgic influence is called 
globus historicus, because the mind gives the feehng of a globe 
rising up in the throat, that threatens instant suffocation and 
great alarm. Even beggars have discovered the philosophic 
fact of the gastric and dietetic influences upon man, and that 
a full stomach makes a generous soul, so that they never call 
for alms upon an empty stomach. 

These things I mention to illustrate how wonderfully the 
mind is wrought upon from without as well as from within, and 
a volume of such secret and unobserved agencies from our 
physical organism and internal stimuli might be given to show 



VOLITION, 15 1 

that those operations of the mind not depending upon external 
objects, and consequently called by authors intuitive thoughts, 
divine monitors, angel whispers, and such like mystic powers, 
but I will give only one more prolific source of mental develop- 
ment. The annals of medical science show that the most in- 
trepid heroes, and generous souls have been produced by the 
seminal stimuli, and that quickly may such souls be reduced 
to cowardice, roguery, and insignificance, simply by emascula- 
tion, and history shows that the most eloquent orator, profound 
philosopher, and divine in the world was instantly reduced to 
demeutation and purility in this way. We may run through 
history from the days of Solomon and David, Caesar and 
Mark Anthony to Napoleon, Jackson, Clay, and Webster as 
well as all others of great note, for the confirmation of this 
fact. We may also by analogy refer to the stallion, the bull, 
the boar and rooster for the powerful influence of internal and 
corporeal stimulants. The mind, I have said, is a unit without 
any of those powers, faculties, and complicated divisions given 
it by routine copyists. But is simply susceptible of endless 
modes of action from the impress of objects from our outer 
senses or from organic and internal emotions. Nor can the 
mind act upon itself, any more than a will can cremate itself, or 
the mirror create the pictures it reflects, the paper the charac- 
ters written upon it, or the wax the endless forms that may be 
stamped upon it. 

I have said the mind can not act upon itself, nor has it any 
more power of self-development than the seed put in the ground 
to be acted upon by the soul, and the nourishing and vitalizing 
elements around. The soil has no knowledge of anything, not 
even the alphabet of its own language, till impressed upon it. 
Neither mind nor body have a self-creating or self-sustaining 
sovereignty, but are both subject in common with all created 
things to the universal, fixed, and fatal laws of causality. 
Fever does not exist in the system, but is the product of a 
cause acting upon it, nor is the rusty nail which produces lock- 



158 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

jaw, any part of it. Ideas, in like manner, are not inherent in 
the mind, but are the mere results of things known operating 
upon the mind, and intelligence is consequently as much a con- 
ception and impregnation of the mind, as the child is a con- 
ception and impregnation of the body, or the growth of any- 
thing something actually acquired through the agencies of the 
vital functions. All are therefore effects, and as effects must 
have their causes. They are not the authors of their own exist- 
ence or the first moving link in the chain of causality. In plain 
truth, every action, change and product throughout the universe, 
short of divine sovereignty, is an effect. We speak of causes, 
but these causes must themselves be effects, as the father though 
the cause of his son, was himself the product of an antecedent 
father, and consequently an effect. 

The cause of original thought is not inherent in the mind, 
but like love and hatred, in the objects beloved and hated. 
Why for instance does a man not fall in love with man, and 
marry him instead of a woman, simply because the will-making 
cause or motive power is not in the mind, nor in the man, but 
in the woman, that no authority short of God can alter. This 
is a fatality of God's own appointment, and no quibbling writer 
can write God out of his rights. But the question may be 
asked, why did such a man fancy such a woman, and the simple 
answer is that he had a will so to do, and could not do other- 
wise, the motive will or cause being in that particular woman. 
Yes, but she is not to me an object of love, but is disgusting ; 
true, but a dog will leave a bed of roses for a rotten carcass, 
simply because it is his nature so to do; the cause of choice 
or motive power being in the object chosen. But could he not 
have married another woman, if he had chosen to do so; cer- 
tainly he could, and could not have done otherwise, and yet it 
was impossible for him to do so under the circumstances, be- 
cause he had no will at the time so to act. A man could as 
easily make a good bargain as a bad one, if he had a will to 
do so, and save himself many sore regrets, but I ask the honest 



VOLITION. 159 

thinker to say whether the present circumstances of the 
moment did not beget the will for a bad bargain. To farther 
show the controlling influence of motive over the will, and 
demonstrate that the will does not beget itself, I will give an 
additional case. Suppose, two boxes, exactly hke in all ap- 
pearance, be presented to the mind for choice, but one is known 
to be filled with rich jewelry, and the other empty. Now the 
mind will be in equipoise suspense, and no choice for the mo- 
ment can by any freedom of the will be made, but let it be 
seen or said, in this box are the precious diamonds, and how 
quickly does that box beget the will to take it. These are 
simple and undeniable facts, showing demonstratively that in 
every case there must be some motive or impulse which excites 
the will. Yanity, ambition, love, hatred, gain, and ten thou- 
sand other causes of human will and action are found to have 
their governing influences over the human mind. When I say 
to a man, he cannot raise his arm, and he in triumph and de- 
fiance does so, my voice and the ambition excited that will, 
which otherwise would never have existed. 

Suppose a jet-black object be presented to the eye, could a 
man, if he had a mind so to do, will or believe it white? most 
certainly he could, if he had a mind to do so, but here as in 
all other cases it would be impossible for him to have such a 
mind or will without the ability to change the object itself, 
that begets the will. Suppose again, that a Catholic say to a 
Protestant, if you have a will, you can believe that the holy 
faith of the Pope to be the only true religion on earth, and if 
you do not, you shall be put to death, would this, I ask, change 
his honest convictions, or would it give him a will to hate his 
cruel and unjust oppressor. These facts should, surely, give us 
a more brotherly tolerance and kind forgiveness for each other's 
opinions, which I teach to be as variant and unavoidable as 
our physical and mental appetencies. 

I have thus somewhat digressed, in order to occupy the 
whole of the ground, and in some instances have thought it 



160 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

well to pass over it more than once, in order to fix the ground- 
rights more fully upon the mind of the reader. 

There is no subject that can engage the thought or fix the 
conviction of mankind, so firmly and so universally as the 
consciousness of being able to do as we will or please, and the 
fault of necessarians heretofore has been to oppose this self- 
evident fact, for certainly we can do as we please, and cannot, 
to save our lives, voluntarily do otherwise, and yet this granted 
fact does not derogate in the least from the laws of necessity, 
but, on the contrary, shows the fixed and indissoluble relation 
between motive, will, and action. The motive having control 
over the will, and the will over the muscles. The deception 
here is that we only feel the last two links in the moving chain, 
which are certainly free to move, or they would not move, but 
we never look back to the fixed and antecedent links that 
necessarily moves the last series in that chain. If it be said, 
that the will is not material, and, therefore, exempt from the 
laws of dependence or necessity, I answer that an agent as 
potent and productive as the will must have an existence, and 
whatever has an existence, must have come into existence, and 
as it cannot have created itself before itself was or had an 
existence, it must of positive necessity have an immediate ante- 
cedent or cause that excited it for the occasion, and shaped it 
to suit the occasion, or it is uncreated and self-existent from all 
eternity. If the will's self-existence from all eternity be as- 
sumed, it must be a definite character, that is, it must be what 
it was in the beginning, and nothing else; and if of this iden- 
tical character, it can no more alter itself, or shape itself to the 
emergencies of life than it can create itself. Then how, I ask, 
will this gratuitous assumption of free will apply to the uses of 
life. From day to day, hour to hour, from minute to minute, 
are our actions called for, according to the necessities of our 
nature, and this unchangeable statue of an eternal will cannot 
apply or serve our wants. It is easy for the common reader 
to see, that if God were created, that as certainly as the 



VOLITION. 161 

mechanic is superior to his work, would God's creator be 
superior to God himself, who, we affirm, has no superior. It 
is equally axiomatic that God cannot have created himself, as 
to do so would be to suppose a thing creating itself before it 
had itself an existence, which is the same as to say that a thing 
can be and not be at the same time, or that it can act when it 
is not and where it is not. Many Divines have gone so far, 
and most truthfully so, as to say that God has not given to the 
mind to conceive how he could himself create something from 
nothing, and, hence, that it is most rational to suppose that 
matter or the materials of which he has formed all things, was 
self-existent, co-eternal, and co-extensive with himself. Then, 
having taken from God a self-creating power, shall we im- 
piously assign to the human mind, a created being, a power 
superior to Jehovah, a self-creating and self-controlHng power, 
in defiance of the laws of providence, and against all motives 
for good or evil. 

This is the naked and ridiculous position of a free-will, for, 
if not governed by existing causes and wants that hourly assail 
our sensibilities from without and within, it must in defiance 
of all these potencies create its own causes. Thus must an 
effect create its cause contrary to every principle and law that 
sustains the harmonious universe, and leads us step by step 
through the unerring paths of causality up to the throne of 
God, the first and only cause of all created existences. Reader, 
if yon will but think for yourself, these things I relate to you 
will be too plain for the waste of words. They are God's own 
ordinances, written upon the tablet of every mind, and where 
not defaced or obliterated by early prejudice or obscured by 
scholasticism and learned nonsense, stands out in bold relief. 
I ask my reader again whether he does not know the fact that 
the only knowledge we have of our creator is from his natural 
and immutable laws, in other words, the unerring book of 
nature, his first revelation, not written in Hebrew, Greek, or 
Latin, but in a language simple and suited to all nations, con- 



162 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ditions, and ages. This may seem a- startling fact to the 
ignorant, who have been deluded by theological mysticism, yet 
it is ennobling to God, and glorious in its results to man, and 
though not investigated by the lower orders of the clergy, is 
advocated by the more noble and elevated souls, who, bursting 
from their clerical closet as the eagle from his dirty cage, seek 
God in a purer and higher sphere, far above the fettering 
dogmas and bewildering enigmas of the Church. In the knowl- 
edge of truth, and with a sincerity of heart, I appeal to every 
Christian and Bible reader to answer me with an equal eye to 
truth and the honor of God, whether he has in any instance, 
in scriptural record, given a single argument for the existence 
of himself. In all cases, without exception, the position is 
assumed that there is a God, and where there is a shadowing 
forth by reason, the appeal is to those very laws of nature 
written in his first book of revelation (nature), which was in- 
tended to, and does incontestably, prove his second revelation. 
His natural revelation gives us a knowledge of his works, and 
through them of himself, while his supernatural instruct us in 
our moral duty, and our devotion to him. But think of these 
things, and then how the world has been governed by opinions, 
and then again how those opinions have been formed by assail- 
ing and unavoidable circumstances, and you will be better in- 
formed, and thus qualified to aid in the great cause of inter- 
lection and of human happiness. The serpent, by assiduous 
and wily means, tempted or persuaded Eve to the conviction 
of impunity, and in the indulgence of this opinion, mankind fell. 
From that hour to this, all the acts of individuals for woe or 
for weal, and the aim, the end, and the mighty result of com- 
bined powers in bloody struggle, huve all been from this one 
omnipotent, yet simple thing, called will or opinion. And what 
is opinion ? It is what every man feels, and yet finds hard to 
define. What gravitation is, or any other ultimate fact, no 
man has known, not even Sir Isaac Newton, yet from its gentle 
hand upon the falling apple he traced its laws on and on 



VOLITION. 163 

through regions far and spheres sublime, and there saw its 
mighty grasp on whirling worlds. And just so with opinion, 
which is a simple impression or conviction forced upon the 
human mind by assailing and insidious influences, over which 
we have no control, and the modus operandi, of which we know 
but little, yet we can trace its results from the gentle smiles of 
the little babe to the scowling and bloody passions of those 
monsters of the inquisition. For the moral training and happy 
government of man, then, it is all important that we should 
understand the laws of mind, by which those opinions are 
formed and controlled. 

That our minds are inclined by something that inclines 
them, cannot be denied, and to suppose a volition counter to 
the prevailing inclination, is contrary to all experience, so that 
our volitions cannot be free and independent of motives, or those 
causes inclinations. It is by the laws of necessity alone, that 
we can know the certainty of any thing physical or mental. If 
the mind be left to chance the study of it, and the infering a 
man's future conduct from his past character, is all in vain. 
And why lecture, preach, or teach, if these impressions are not 
to influence the mind ? The law of necessity is nothing more 
than the law of God, established to make all things siare. It 
is nothing more nor less than that indissoluble relation between 
cause and effect, and but for the full conviction of all mankind 
in the fact, and his reliance upon it, all transactions of life 
would cease. Why eat and drink, or cultivate the soil, hoping 
to be sustained thereby, but from our confidence in the doctrine 
of necessity; and why offer rewards and punishments, or set 
examples to good and evil, if there be no necessary connection 
between these things and the convictions of the mind. We can 
as certainly anticipate the operations of the will, when tempta- 
tions are set to excite it, as we can the products of our crop, 
or the explosion of powder by the touch of the spark. It may 
not always succeed from unseen and counteracting causes, nor 
may not powder always explode, being wet or otherwise imper- 



164 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

feet. The chemist, though acting upon the necessary laws of 
science, is as often disappointed in his results from the endless 
and unseen counteracting influences, as the man well acquainted 
with human nature is of the anticipations of his results. The 
physician, in like manner, is constantly perplexed and disap- 
pointed in the sequences of his prescriptions, for though calumel 
be a purgative, and tartar will puke, calumel may vomit, and 
tartar purge, from some necessary existing, yet unseen condi- 
tion of system. Constitution, temperament, and disease that 
blunts or sharpens the sensibilities, and a thousand other causes 
from without and within, may intervene to disappoint our anti- 
cipations, and yet the laws of mentality are just as certain as 
those of matter, wherein we are also as often disappointed. If 
a rock be cast into the air, the law of gravitation will certainly 
bring it to the earth, yet it may lodge upon some intervening 
object, and not fall so in the like manner; if you offer a miser 
two dollars for one, the law of motive will certainly control his 
will to take them, but should a suspicion intervene, that there 
is a trick in it, he will not do so. 

These are no exceptions to the uniform laws both of mind 
and matter, but the very proof of it, each counter-acting law 
producing its legitimate effect, A feather may start in a direct 
line in the air and yet be driven in a thousand whirls and zig- 
zag directions ; but in every motion it has a definite cause. 
So it is with mind: it may be carried here, there and else- 
where, just as motives may be presented of this, that, or the 
other strength. A man may start to a designated spot and 
yet be driven from that spot in various directions by the cry 
of fire, of murder, and other deterring attractive sounds or 
sights. Here were no self-creations of will which was produced 
by ample causes over which he had no control; and this will 
be found to be the case in every action throughout life. The 
will or desire is invariably excited either by external or internal 
causes, and the action will as infaUibly and unavoidably follow 
the will or desire to act, as the will itself follows the mo- 



VOLITION. 165 

tive. Why then talk of a free will without motives in such 
case any more than the freedom of the billiard ball to move 
without a cause, when struck with sufficient force to move it. 
If the ball, when struck, had the feeling that we have, it would 
at once declare its freedom to move, as we do when we feel the 
stroke or liberty given us by the will or desire to move. This 
might seem to a careless reader a surrender of the point. But 
not so, for I have previously granted that the action or mo- 
tion (for there is no action without motion) is not only at 
liberty to follow or proceed from the will, but is forced to do 
so, and is just as much under the law of necessity, as is the 
ball under the law of the infringing power. Let common sense 
and the universal unity of action in the will decide whether 
the deed does not invariably follow the desire or will, and as 
previously stated the will itself is the unavoidable result of an an- 
tecedent and causal motive. I will to sit, I do so ; I will to 
rise, and do so ; I will to lift my arm, and I do so ; and will 
to lower it, and it is done. The action quickly following, and 
being a forced result of the will, as the moving ball is the 
forced result of the willed ball that operates upon it. To 
be plain, I ask, whether any man ever did an act contrary 
to his will or desire so to do, and whether he can conceive 
it possible to voluntarily do a thing which he at the mo- 
ment does not want to do. 

It is a common and silly remark that we do many things 
which we do not want to do, which must be seen to be a glar- 
ing inconsistency and a gross solecism in language. I will give 
a few striking examples to show the fallacy of this position. 
When a man goes to the stake voluntarily for his religious 
opinions, it may be said that he dies unwillingly and without 
a motive. But this, when investigated, will be found to be 
false ; he, having a motive stronger even than the miser, who 
exchanges one dollar for two, for he exchanges temporary tor- 
ments for eternal happiness. Again, we set ourselves up to be 
shot at in a duel, or walk to the gallows voluntarily to be 



166 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

hanged, which, when understood, constitute no exceptions to 
the necessity of will. 

It may here be taunted then, that we must prefer death 
to life. But not so, we are forced to the gallows by the un- 
avoidable laws of necessity, from which the poor will, this 
non-caused and self-created being, has no escape. We walk 
to the gallows like a man, rather than be dragged there and 
hung like a dog, and we prop ourselves up to be shot at in a 
duel in order to escape a greater evil : the blighting clamor 
of cowardice and disgrace. The man who commits suicide 
weighs his motives, and prefers instant death to a long and 
lingering life of hopeless misery. I introduce those graphic 
cases to show that the mind is the subject of circumstances or 
motives that surround us and force themselves upon us from 
day to day, and that it has no power to create, annihilate, or 
alter these motives that beget the will and force it to action. 
To test the sovereign power of this non-caused cause, this de- 
ceptive sound, this wonderful thingless thing, called will, let us 
exercise it awhile, and see what it can of itself do. Can it 
create a desire or will ? No ; because it is itself a desire or 
will, and not a cause, but a result ; not a principle, but an 
agent ; the mere creature or menial of a motive. Can it create 
a thought ? No ; nor get rid of one. Can it soothe a pain ? 
No ; nor cure a fever. Can it put us to sleep, when restless 
and worn-out upon our beds ? No. Can it make a blind man 
see, or a deaf one hear ? No. Can it create a single idea ? 
No ; no more than it can create a world. Then, what can it 
do more than move as a fated link in the adamantine chain of 
mental causality — the first link of which is held by the hand 
of almighty power. And could this pigmy will sever it from 
its divine and harmonious dependencies, all would become a 
shapeless and melancholy wreck. In testing this creative 
power or inventive will a little farther, we will see that it 
cannot call up a single idea that has not already been impres- 
sed upon the mind, through our senses by the external world. 



A 



VOLITION. IdT 

'Nor can the mind by any power of will even call up those 
ideas at pleasure that have once been before the mind. We 
are apt thoughtlessly to say that we can think of any thing or 
idea we may will to think of. I think of London or of Paris, 
for instance : yes, but London and Paris were in my mind and 
the objects of thoughts, or in other words, they were thought 
of before I could name them as objects of thought. 

One may say I can see any object you may name within 
the sphere of my vision, which is true, and more than this 
such person with open eyes could not to save their lives, avoid 
seeing. I might say to a man : "Now, think of heaven f 
and he can not only do so, but cannot help doing so. My 
voice having put heaven into his head, a name or thought 
that otherwise could not have been there, and consequently 
could not have been thought of without being there. A per- 
son may affirm that they can think of what they please, or 
name any person they may see proper ; for instance that they 
will name and think of Washington ; but here as in the other 
case Washington was thought of before they could name him 
as the object of thought. Now, all this is as simply and 
plainly true as it is possible for any proposition to be. 

But reflect upon these facts for a moment, and you will 
see how impossible and how ludicrous the position, of being able 
to think as we please, is. Now I ask, in the name of common 
honesty, can we call up a thing by its proper name without 
knowing the name of that thing, or think of an object that is 
not an object, or in other words has no excistence, or which is 
the same thing, is not already in the mind, and the immediate 
object of thought. Thus, if the reader will go on slowly and 
carefully, he will see that it is impossible to call for a thing 
without knowing what to call for, as to speak a language that 
is not in his mind and of which he has no knowledge. Nor can 
he think of a thing without having that very thought already 
in bis mind. I have here repeated the view, and turned the 
picture about to show the careless observer, how obvious the 



168 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

fact is, that we cannot create or originate any thing, and that 
all our actions proceed from will or desire, and that will or 
desire is begot by motives that we did not create, and over 
which we have no more control, than the eye has over light 
or the ear over sound, when sensitive and assailed. The blind 
man cannot by any exertion of will see : no, or think of light; 
yet open his eyes with visual impressibility and he cannot 
avoid light. He then becomes the subject of this self-evident 
doctrine of necessity. He cannot open his eyes to midday, and 
think it or will it to be midnight ; nor can he look aroand him 
and not have the objects that there exist fatally forced upon him. 

This is necessity, the immutable and eternal law of God's 
own mechanism ; and why eschew or impiously oppose it ? 

As the words will and desire are of the same import, and 
the term desire being expressive and less ambiguous, I shall 
frequently use it in the course of this essay. We have all our 
lives been in the habit of giving to the word will complicated 
and wonderful powers, but which, when analyzed, we find to be 
nothing more tban a simple result, the product of motive ; and 
yet it is like all other inveterate habits, hard to be broken 
of their faults and mischievous associations. It is this false 
association that has produced so much bewildering, ludicrous 
and disgraceful contentions amongst Divines in their heated 
discussions upon the subject of will. As for example : between 
Rev. Jonathan Edwards and Dr. Whitby, with a score of Ar- 
menian pigmies, who have pounced upon him with their vulgar 
prejudices and vociferous unmeanings of free will. 

Presuming that the testimony, furnished the reader, has 
proven to his satisfaction that God has so constituted us in 
mind and body, that will or desire shall be the immediate 
precursor of all human action from the tongue that speaks to 
the feet that walk, and the hands that execute, we will ascend 
one step higher in the ladder of truth. FeeUng then, that all 
our acts are the result of will, and seeing, that will cannot, from 
any possible contingent or law under God's universe, have 



VOLITION. 169 

created itself, we shall next search for its cause. Man like will 
is an active agent, yet nothing but an agent — did not orighiate 
or create himself — consequently had a cause of existence. All 
rational beings are moved by the impetus or force of motives. 
We cannot voluntarily act without a desire or choice so to 
act, and desire as unavoidably implies an object of desire that 
begets it, as the word, "son," implies a father who begot him. 
Trace back the death and the reproduction of man through 
mouldering ages to the first man, Adam, or glance forward 
through ceaseless duration to the last man who may hang 
upon the verge of time, and there will not be found a single 
gap or broken link in this eternal chain of causality, that 
firmly bands God's harmonious and mighty universe. Pause 
but for a moment, and think of these things, and how impossi- 
ble the doctrine of casualism must be ; for if God had created 
things contingently and allowed beings to come into existence 
without a designated and fixed cause, the world would be filled 
with new non-descript and motley spontaneities, without an 
archetype and without the pale of God's government, so that 
we are preserved only by the uniform laws of Providence ; in 
other words, divine fatality. These are the fixed and immuta- 
ble laws of supreme wisdom, and is applicable to mind as to 
matter. Every motive or object of desire begets its appro- 
priate desire, or will ; and all our movements, improperly called 
free volitions, are as much forced as the rifle ball is forced by 
the powder behind it. The ball has no liberty but to obey the 
impulse, and human action has no liberty but to obey the will, 
and the will itself no liberty but to obey the cause, the motive 
or impinging power behind it. I will to raise my arm, and it is 
done; I will to walk, and the limbs are put in motion. Now, the 
motive here, whether from a banter or from the ten thousand 
other incitements, caused the will, and the will caused the mus- 
cular motion. The powder explodes, and the ball is driven before 
it. In like manner, the steam is let upon the engine, and the ves- 
sel is put in motion. But in neither case is there a self-creating 

8 



ItO MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and independent power. But for the spark that causes the explo- 
sion, and gives it its quickening power, the powder would remain 
forever uuexploded and powerless. In like manner would the 
mighty engine, the will of the vessel that sends or makes it wnlk 
with magic power through the waters, remain a lifeless tool as it 
is, but for the steam that is let upon it. In this case, everybody 
looks at the astounding might of the working engine as it wields 
the ponderous mass, without thinking of the power behind it, and 
just so it is with the workings of the will upon the human body. 
Every one sees and feels the energies of the engine will, without 
looking at or feeUng the silent motive-power behind it, that be- 
gets it and forces it to act just as it does act. We differ greatly 
in regard to the potency of this will or engine, and the regu- 
larity of its action for good or evil, owing to our mechanism, 
constitution, temperament, prejudice of education, and to the 
interminable aptitudes to the impulses of passion and of the 
impressions that are momently made upon our sensitive being 
through life. Precisely so with a vessel of less complicacy, 
yet from defect in construction, or from the machinery becom- 
ing deranged, it may go astray like the madman, and even be 
reversed in its motion, but it is still moved by the same engine 
without violation of principle, not being able to alter its own 
condition. The deranged man is under the same necessity, 
yet he is governed by the same principle as the sane man, who 
has not a jar or a crack, or a screw loose in his system. He 
is governed in all his various and apparently inconsistent move- 
ments by his firm and honest convictions, or that same will 
forced upon him by external circumstances, or excited within 
by the feverish or otherwise disordered condition of his sys- 
tem. Nor is there any escape from the workings of this en- 
gine will, as long as the steam is let upon. If the steam 
wears down or becomes exhausted, the will of the vessel no 
longer works, and the vessel sleeps. Identically so is it with 
miiid^ — when the sensorial power or steam becomes exhausted 
by over-working, the engine will cease and the body sleeps; 



VOLITION. Ill 

but the stomach, like the furnace of the vessel, being con- 
stantly supplied by food or fuel, the. steam is again and again 
renewed. 

We cannot have a sensation of any kind, whether of pleas- 
ure or of pain, but that there is a desire or will got up, to do 
or not to do ; in other words to embrace or avoid. Even 
when asleep, and the doors of knowledge are closed to the 
external world, the laws of the animal economy are such that 
we are stirred by functional influences to pleasure or pain, 
and often to act as though we were awake. When the bowels 
are disturbed, we dream of stooling; the bladder : of urinating; 
when hungry : of eating ; when thirsty : of water and drinking ; 
and there are many other normal and abnormal phenomena : 
all arising from a definite organism, and the uniform and fixed 
relation between mind and body, and which is as indissoluble 
as the tie between cause and effect. Both in the cases of sum- 
nambulism and somniloquism, the unconscious will, stirred by 
internal forces, puts our machinery in motion. The sensible 
observer may daily see that when his dog is asleep and dream- 
ing of the chase, he will bark while his legs are in motion, as 
though convulsed by galvanic influence. If, then, when our 
senses are locked up and we unconscious of all around, are 
thus forcibly operated upon without a choice or a self-created 
will to bring about these results, is it not proof positive that 
we are governed by the irresistible laws of our nature, ia 
which we have no hand, any more than in the creation of our- 
selves, or the pulsations of our heart. The internal workings 
of our vital functions, of which we are not conscious, are truly 
wonderful ; and here lies the secret of the various mystic sys- 
tems, that refers all human actions, not produced by external 
agencies through our senses to an internal and self-moving 
power of the mind ; called by different names, as inherent or 
intuitive conceptions, sacred monitors, angel whispers, and 
such like. Digestion, absorption, circulation, nutrition, and* 
assimilation, with all the sustaining and renewing both of our 



172 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

mental and physical energies, is carried on as well when asleep 
as when awake, and the conservative vigilance of these vital 
powers is the marvellous work of divine wisdom, and indicates 
a mind of body as well as of brain. Marvellous it is indeed 
that we may take into the stomach an homogenous substance, 
as milk, which is itself a secretion, and it will soon be con- 
verted into muscles, bones, cartilages, tendons, nerves, and 
many other solids, and a thousand secretions ; all differing 
greatly both in their visible appearance and their chemical 
properties. The wear and tear of mind and body by day is 
restored by night ; and the insidious and stealthy encroach- 
ments of morbid influences are watched at every pore. Or- 
ganic breaches that disturb the vital functions, as a cog out 
or a broken wheel, is quickly repaired ; a wound is watched 
and healed, and a bursting blood vessel or a broken bone is 
soon mended. Prick the hand or flesh even when asleep, and 
there is an instantaneous recoil ; — let us stumble or loose our 
balance, and quicker than thought does this law of our nature 
right us up. Indeed, we have no time to think, nor has this 
exotic will time to create itself and to come to our aid. A 
thousand facts of equal wonder and sure design are seen in our 
physiological researches into the animal economy, too numerous 
to doubt the existence of an all-wise and ever-present designer, 
who numbers the hau* upon our head, and suffers not a spar- 
row to fall to the ground without his notice. If these mere 
material and tangible operations of body are carried on with- 
out our consciousness or knowledge of their modus operandi, 
and without a self-created will that creates these results, how 
is it to be supposed that in the more inscrutable and subtle 
mind we scan those ultimate causes that belong to God alone ? 
To cover this ignorance, a thingless name and powerless phan- 
tom has been got up in the dark ages, called will. The physi- 
cian, when ignorant of those inscrutable workings upon his 
patient and pressed hard for explanations, treats the case with 
deep gravity and most learned technicality ; such as morbid 



VOLITION. 1T3 

irritation, normal and abnormal condition of system, loss of 
sensorial power, accumulated excitability, revulsion, transla- 
tion, concatenation, and, above all, '*vis medicatrix natura" is 
dragged in as the universal panacea of medical ignorance. In 
like manner does the superficial metaphysician, when unable 
to go back through the labyrinth and lengthened series of 
causation to the more remote and true causes of human action, 
most sacrilegiously call into existence a non-created and self- 
willed being, that can with impunity violate all the laws of God, 
sever the connection of cause and effect, render void his potent 
and harmonious dependencies, and what is of all most wonderful, 
in this wonderful uncaused and efficient no-cause without the pale 
of God's government, that it can make something out of noth- 
ing, and create and annihilate itself at pleasure ; a power that 
no philosopher or divine on earth ever supposed God himself 
possessed of. Hence it is that he is held to be uncreated and 
from all eternity. This paramount God of all Gods, will, 
however, is said to have no antecedent or cause of being, but 
to rise spontaneously from nothing, and from moment to mo- 
ment through our existence shaped with exact design, but 
without a designer to suit the million of emergencies, emo- 
tions, thoughts and actions of man as he runs the gauntlet 
of life, and is assailed by warring elements on every side. The 
God of the universe cannot be and not be at the same time ; 
nor can he act inconsistently with himself, and yet be a con- 
sistent God. But this God, will, can rise from nothing, can 
be or not be, as it may will, without a parent will ; can make 
incompatibility compatible, inconsistency consistent ; can move 
by contraries, can make virtue vice, and " vice versa ;" can 
act without a motive, prefer without a prefercQce, and choose 
without a choice. These things, ludicrous and impossible as 
they may appear to the reader, are actually the legitimate 
results of the doctrine taught by free-willers. 

Dr. Whitby, the great Armenian champion of free wills, 
seeing that desire is in some way always connected with our 



114 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

volitions, is recreant and traitorous enough to truth and 
sacred reason, to boldly affirm that we do not choose a 
thing because we desire it, but desire it, because we have 
chosen it, making the will thus free to choose without a 
motive, or desire so to do ; the exact converse of our mental 
process and order of exercise in willing, for this would 
be to will contrary to our will, or chose a thing contrary to 
our choice, or desire, in order to obtain that desire. He far- 
ther speaks of an indifference of choice, or an equipoise con- 
dition of mind, leaving it free to act without a choice, which is 
again impossible in any case, for in such case there could be no 
choice, change, or act of mind — quietude and action, or rest 
and motion, being antagonal and incompatible. That a man 
can do what it pleases him to do, I grant, but to say that he 
wills to do what it does not please him to do is absurd, for the 
very putting of the proposition at once gives a denial to the 
affirmative answer. 

In returning again to our analogies and illustrations, it may 
be recollected that I gave the will the place of the engine, which 
in reality is a nullity, a perfect nonentity in regard to an intrinsic 
or self-existent power. Like the powder that would remain 
powerless without the spark that explodes it, the engine would 
lie for ever dead but for the vitalizing steam, which gives it its 
executive office. Explosion is a new creation, and is neither 
powder nor the spark, but a powerful and efficient effect, or off- 
spring of both, and which becomes in the fated chain itself a 
cause. And so in regard to steam, it is a new creation, brought 
into existence not of itself, but by water and fire. Of this 
creative power, through the influence of objective and subjective 
unity, so little understood or applied in our investigations of 
science, we have many examples in chemistry as the union of 
an acid and a base, forming a saline substance, or agent, new 
and efficient in all its appliances, and yet wholly different from 
either of its originals. All our thoughts, ideas and wills are in 
like manner new creations, not from nothing or from individual 



VOLITION. 1T5 

influence, bnt is the result of the objective action upon the subjec- 
tive, or in other words, the influence of the external world act- 
ing upon our sensibilities, or the soul within, through our senses. 
It was from the revivescent and plastic hand of nature in the 
death and reproduction of organic matter in its various forms, 
and of the new and strange productions in the mineral kingdom, 
that doubtless gave to Zoroaster the idea of the transmigration 
of souls, the Pythagorean doctrine, and religion of Persia. True, 
the reader may say ; but now for its application to the subject 
of will, to which I answer that it is by giving a familiar knowl- 
edge of the result of those occult, and wholly inscrutable laws 
that bring into existence such results that we can conceive of 
the workings of appropriate agencies in the hunian mind in the 
production of their results, and it will be found that there are 
more things in this analogy than the giving of a religion to 
millions of our fellow beings. And to prevent the barking of 
cur-critics, who may strike upon a false trail, and cry material- 
ism, I here say, that though chemistry and machinery, used in 
my analogies, are not identical with mind and will, such analog- 
ous principles are common to all things. Were I to say, a good 
man and a good dog, it would not necessarily mean that man 
was a dog, and yet little critics, fonder of controversy than of 
truth and honesty might find excuse for a tirade of Puritanical 
invectives upon this single point, for I have read books against 
Locke's Metaphysics, and the Rev. William Paley's Moral Phi- 
losophy, not a whit better founded, which only proves the fact 
that dogs may bark at dead lions. 

But to return from illustrations to the argument. You say 
that you can do as you please. I say so too. You reply, this 
then is surrendering the question. Yet not so, for it incontest- 
ably confirms my position. I notonly grant that you can do as 
you please, but I affirm, that you can not, to save your life, avoid 
doing what you please, which is a plain proof of necessity, the 
very thing T want. You may be determined to a vicious act, 
but turn it to a virtuous one, or alter your wills in ten thousand 



1T6 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ways, and yet every act must be in obedience to the motivity of 
will. You will to raise your arm, and it is done. I say, now 
put it down, but you reply triumphantly, I wont do it, and so 
hold it up in defiance of my will, but in full accordance with 
your own will. The holding your arm up was as much in obe- 
dience to your will as the raising of it up, and when you put it 
down it will be from the same necessity of action following will. 
The fixed and fatal law of mentality or volantarity is, that the 
muscular action obeys the inflexible mandates of will. A link 
of connection in the machinery of man may be severed, as in 
palsey ; a screw may be loosed, or a bone broken, and in 'that 
case, though the engine will may work intensely, the legs remain 
still and the body unmoved. Just so it is with the vessel, the 
wheels will not walk, nor the body of the boat move, if the con- 
nection between the wheels and engine be cut off. This fated 
necessity of connection as of cause and effect, or will and action 
being established, we will look farther into the origin of will, 
the moving engine of the human system. I have elsewhere said 
that every rational being acted with a view to some end, and 
that that end or object to be obtained was the motive or cause 
of will, and that this exciting object of will bears precisely the 
same necessary relation to the will of man, that the steam does 
to the engine or will of the boat. The steam, though a new 
creation, and got up to suit the occasion, is not a self-created 
being, but is a separate entity, the offspring of water and heat. 
The generators of the will of man are also actual objects, and 
work just as simply and plainly to be seen as the action of one 
billiard ball upon another in the production of motion. For 
example, a child is hungry and sees an apple, and now the will 
to obtain that desired oV)jcct, apple, is certainly created by the 
apple, and the efforts that follow are the necessary results of 
the newly created desire or will to fulfill its destined end. Now, 
in this case, the apple as certainly created the will and the will 
as certainly stretched out the arm, as that any one thing in 
science is the cause of another. It must farther be seen, that 



VOLITION. 



117 



without this apple such will would never have existed ; and 
again, that there is no such thing as steady, or living and last- 
ing will beyond its immediate motive or causal object. Ten 
thousand wills are created daily, and as quickly do they pass off 
for ever, succeeding each other like waves of the ocean. Will 
is not an entity, but simply a conditional or correlative term, 
like hunger, thirst, love, hatred, and other sensations that con- 
stitute neither matter nor spirit, and like motion that inheres 
only in the moving object. Music, for instance, has no real, 
lasting or separate existence apart from the instrument that 
produces it. It is a mere momentary sensation or one of the 
many evanescent modes of mind. Will, like effect, has no sepa" 
rate existence from its cause. Every word we speak, step we 
take, and movement of the body in the execution of our hourly 
vocations, requires a new will generated by the object of desire 
to do what we do. I am cold, and approach the fire, here the 
fire creates the will or desire, and the will carries the body. The 
mind did not produce the fire nor the will to go to it, but God 
created the fire, and the fire created the will to go to it ; and 
from this fatality in God's own hand there is no escape. But 
could we not as easily have staid away from the fire ? Yes in- 
deed, and have suffered or frozen to death, if a stronger mo- 
tive had caused a counter-will, but no such motive having inter- 
fered with the bent of the mind, it was impossible for us, under 
existing circumstances to do otherwise than what we did. The 
difficulty in understanding this subject has ever been, that we 
feel the desire or will to act, and see the result, but never look 
back of the will to see how it is produced. We may see a pup- 
pet dancing, and except we look behind the curtain to see the 
hand of design that holds the law of motion, we might suppose 
it to have vitality and intrinsic power. To free the subject as 
far as possible from vague abstractions and bewildering techni- 
calities, I have striven thus, to illustrate, by familiar examples 
of every-day life, and original, but, I hope, acceptable mode of 
instruction. And again we may exercise our thoughts in trac- 

8* 



118 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ing the succession of events. We see a man dead from a shot 
and accuse the ball, the only thing seen, of the deed. It pleads 
necessity, as being sent by a power called explosion, the explos- 
ion accuses the powder ; the powder being innocent in itself, re- 
fers to the spark or cap that ignited it ; the cap to the cock or 
hammer that struck it, and the hammer to the mainspring, that 
to the trigger ; the trigger to the finger, the finger to the tendon, 
the tendon to muscle, the muscle to the nerve, and the nerve to 
the will, which will is gone for ever, but could it be called up, 
it would refer you to some powerful impulse, passion, or emo- 
tion, that begot the will. But could not a counteracting or 
paramount will have prevented that fatal will, is the natural 
question of every man ; which question brings the subject in 
all its force, fully and fairly, right up before us. I answer 
promptly to this question, that a stronger will would as certainly 
have counteracted this fatal will, as that the whole is greater 
than a part, but it is equally certain that as the prompting pas- 
sions and emotions of soul, or in other words, as the motives 
then before the mind did not excite such will, it was impossible 
under existing circumstances for him to have such a will, which 
surely left him as free to follow the stronger will as a feather is 
to float with the currents of the prevailing winds. It would 
have been just as easy for water to run upwards, sparks to 
descend, and rocks to float, instead of being ruled by the fatal 
law of gravitation, as they now are, if God had so willed it, 
but as God in his plans of creation from the motives then before^ 
him, had no such counter will, he ordered things as they now 
are, which renders it impossible for them to be otherwise than 
as they are. Again, if God had willed us to live for ever, we 
could not die ; but ah ! how in the absence of that easy will do 
we feel the powerful influence of our fated death ! It would be 
just as easy for to-morrow to be clear as to be cloudy, but if 
cloudy, it will not be without a necessary and sufficient cause in 
the unseen and unending series of ever-moving events. If those 
who have gone to the stake had had a mind they could have 



VOLITION. IT 9 

thought otherwise than they did, and thus have saved their 
lives, but without being able to change the circumstances that 
fixed upon them the death-deserving opinion ; it was impossible 
for them to have such a mind. I think, however, aside from 
these examples that the reader must clearly see from the very 
nature and fixed relations of things themselves, that no change 
of will can occur without a change in the principle or laws that 
governs will. For instance, if a man of quick temper has his 
face spit in, he will be prompted to strike, before he has time to 
think, while another cowardly, or of blunt feeling and slow temper 
having time to weigh the consequences, may withold the blow, 
but in each case the parties were governed by the necessity of 
their nature. And again, suppose a man starts to attend a 
card party or a drinking club, but while on the way a thought 
of evil consequences comes over his mind and he turns back, 
was he not in each case governed by a sufficient motive to 
move him, so that a first will being counteracted by a second 
will is no proof of a self-created or non-caused will. A virtuous 
will then that counteracts a vicious will is no less a motive or 
caused will, and as whatever is moved, is moved by something, 
and whatever is caused is caused by something, the will must 
have a motive for action, and be that motive good or bad, real 
or imaginary, for ghosts move the mind with great power, it 
leaves the will free to act without a motive. It turns out then 
to be simple and plain that a good end to be obtained begets 
good will, and a bad one a bad will, or there can be no merit 
or demerit in the actions of men. 

It is granted by all sound minds in science, that the same 
causes will always produce the same effects under the same 
circumstances, which renders it impossible, that any man could 
have done other than he did, influenced by circumstances as he 
then was. It is a common, but thoughtless and false remark, 
in the mouth of every one: well, I am sorry I did so, for I might 
have done otherwise. One moment's thought will convince us 
of this most palpable and unhappy of all errors. The pursuit 



180 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

of every man throughout life, from his cradle to his grave, is 
that of happiness, and this arises from the first law of our 
constitution, which God has implanted in us for self-preserva- 
tion. He has given us acute sensibiHties of pleasure and of 
pain, which gives us a desire or will to escape from the one 
and seek the other, and simple arid comprehensible as it may 
be, constitutes the mainspring of human action, and is the key 
to the phenominal series of hfe. How, then, under this granted 
and governing law, can any rational being involuntarily seek 
pain in preference to pleasure, and, if not so, he certainly acts 
at the time he acts with the best lights that he at the time 
had, and were it possible for him to go back with identically 
the same impressions or opinions, it most assuredly must appear 
that the same results would occur. From the same principles 
of our nature, it must be evident, that we would not suffer 
under bitter and deep self-reproach, and anguish of soul for 
past acts, if the lights, now shining in upon our souls, had co- 
existed with those regretted acts. 

Why, then, so foolishly say that we could have done other- 
wise than we did, or that the will has power to act contrary 
to the convictions of the soul. And now the result of the ex- 
amples beautifully illustrate the utilitarian principles, upon 
which my book is founded ; to wit, that, by enlightening the 
human family and giving them a clear knowledge of the laws 
of God or nature, and our own constitutions, and how those 
laws or elements operate upon our sentient and percipient 
being, that we are to obtain that quiet satisfaction and hap- 
piness of mind, for which the world incessantly strives. Having 
in other parts of this essay fully pointed out to man his only 
hopes for happiness, it will not be necessary here to dwell upon 
this point. It may be said, why educate, instruct, or admonish, 
if all is fate and fixed by laws that cannot be altered at will. 
But I answer that these very laws of fatality are what makes 
us free to escape destruction or less consequences as the case 
may be; and farther, these laws being fatal, afford the only 



VOLITION. 181 

rational plea for instruction. For instance, being instructed 
that water will drown, and fire burn, we keep out of them, and 
thereby avoid the consequences; the friendly law of fatality 
making us free to escape the more fatal law of destruction. If, 
on the contrary, God had left things to chance or contingency, 
instruction and knowledge would all be in vain, as founded 
upon the shifting sands, bread that nourishes us one day might 
prove a deadly poison by the next, and a deed of virtue one 
hour, a vicious one on the following, so that it will be seen in 
a single sentence that the doctrine of free will and casualism 
would destroy all knowledge, and leave us a physical and 
moral wreck. 

The fatality, I teach, is conditional; it is this, that if you 
sin you shall be punished. If a man be viciously taught, his 
passions and wills will be fatally vicious; and if raised igno- 
rantly, the poor fellow will be fatally ignorant. If Eve had 
have believed in the doctrine of fatality, she would not, when 
told what would be her fate, have committed the acts she did. 
But being persuaded by the free will, devil, that there was a 
casuality in the command that left room for escape, she, in con- 
sequence, hazarded the happiness of all mankind. 

The physical universe depends wholly upon fatality for its 
glorious harmony and eternal preservation, and but for the 
reliable constitution of man in his susceptibility of pleasure and 
pain, and his steady relation to his creator, good and evil would 
be neutralized and lost in the destructive vortex, casualism. 
Grant the existence of a God, and his steady rule and govern- 
ment over all things, then, indeed, will instruction in his laws, 
for which he has given us full capacity, prove valuable to our- 
selves and acceptable to him. In short and in plain truth, the 
full and sovereign control of God over man, in all his ephemeral 
and impotent movements in life, is wholly incompatible with 
free wills or casualisms of any kind, which shows that the dis- 
graceful wranglings and petty and puerile struggles between 



182 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

God and man for mastery, as taught in the duncery depart- 
ments of theology, must be grossly and offensively false. 

I will show in the close of this essay, that God has estab- 
ished all things upon dualistic and dynamic principles, and 
that neither free will nor any thing else in the universe, save 
God, stands independent and alone, but all are mutual depen- 
dencies on the one great moving cause ; — and farther, that 
the will is nothing more than the mind, and the mind nothing 
more than the will, when willing ; and moreover, that judg- 
ment, reason, memory, imagination, etc., are in like manner 
nothing more than mind in its different modes of action ; and 
also make it plain, that the mind is a unit, and that it has no 
power, and cannot be divided into the various parts and 
powers given it by scholastic and routine writers. The mind 
is simply a capacity or recipient, like the vessel, or a mirror 
that is operated upon; the mind, like the wax, has an impres- 
sibility for all things that may be impressed upon it. Precisely 
as is the body that does not act upon the medicine, but upon 
which the medicine acts. The question whether a cup of 
strong tea operates upon the mind to keep it awake all night, 
or whether the tea does not operate upon the mind, at once 
gives the affirmative answer. The vital powers, so called, do 
not operate upon the snake in case of a bite, but the snake 
operates upon them, when it destroys them, and reduces the 
body to death. 

Fatality instructs us that we have no will to speak an un- 
known language, yet this very fatality gives us the will to 
learn it ; and though we have no will to cure the fever, a 
knowledge of the fact gives us a will to avoid the malarious 
region that would cause the fever. Fatality, farther, instructs 
us in morals, that we have no will to save ourselves from con- 
demnation for sin, but a knowledge of this fact gives us a will 
to avoid sin ; — knowing that no will we can create of our own can 
save us from punishment, gives us a will to abstain from crime ; 
and thus it must appear to the most common reader, that the 



VOLITIOV. 183 

doctrine of fatality is the only immutable basis upon which to 
found a rational education ; and farther, if events could be 
brought about without a fixed and known law of God by the 
self-created will of man, all knowledge of the future, both by 
God and man, would be destroyed. Arrogant and impious 
then must be the man who aims by a self-created power to 
resist the laws of his own constitution, and subvert the man- 
dates of heaven. The pre-science or fore-knowledge of God 
would be impossible, if there were other gods or men who 
could by their own wills diange the result or destiny of things. 
The future with God is the same as the past with men, and 
as what has past is certain, and 'unalterable, that which is 
to come is just as certain and unalterable with God. Now, 
it will be easily seen, that had God left it to the whims of 
men's wills, to do or not do independent of fixed and fatal 
laws of his own, by which he can judge that his future knowl- 
edge must be uncertain, for how could he be certain of an 
event that is uncertain, or to know a thing to be that may 
no be. 

Things past, as I have said, are fatally certain, and things 
to come are equally certain, or God's knowledge must be un- 
certain. Man may stand in a small cercle, as within a wheel, 
and see upon its surface, as it revolves through time and space, 
and all will be equally distant and divisible to him, the present, 
past, and future ; the enth'e round of the wheel being the same. 
In like manner, God's throne being in the centre of his vast 
universe, his telescopic eye can see all at a glance. Observing, 
then, as we must, that God's perfect fore-knowledge of events 
and free wills, whims, or accidents are incompatible, and that 
the doctrine of necessity is thereby estabhshed, some have de- 
nied to God his power of pre-science. This power, however, 
cannot thus be got rid of, particularly by Christians, for it is 
recorded in his book of revelation that he did predict the 
actions of men, and brought them to pass to the letter. As 
of his telling Moses in advance what the conduct of Pharaoh 



184 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

would be, and that lie would not let him depart. In short, all 
the prophecies were founded upon God's fore-knowledge, from 
which it must appear obvious to every man, that, if the events 
and persons spoken of, had had a will of their own independent 
of God's will, or known knowledge, and could act from moment 
to moment even against all temptations, causes, or motives, 
God could not, by any possibility, have known their deeds, 
where they might have seen proper to act differently. Stand 
here for a time unsandalled, for you are upon holy ground, and 
think seriously of what you read. We can, with our limited 
knowledge, anticipate the conduct of men, and did we know 
them perfectly, we could present a motive or lay a bait for 
every act of life. For instance, we know that a miser will 
prefer two dollars to one, and that a man, who has a strong 
propensity for drink, will take it when the temptation is set 
before him, provided there be no intervening temptations to 
draw his mind in a different direction. All other events of 
life are equally certain, when understood, and why, then, say 
that we are not actuated by motives and by laws, just as ob- 
vious and sure, as the movement of the material bodies. We 
will farther that will is an effect, as has been often asserted, 
and how it is created or produced. One man calls another a 
liar,' it creates a will to strike, but fear of consequences or a 
regard for moral duty may be the stronger motive, and create 
a will not to strike. A large sum of money, without fear of 
detection, may create a will to steal, but if a high sense of 
honor and moral turpitude, from an early and well grounded 
instruction in religion, comes in as his stronger motive, the theft 
will not be committed. Liquor creates a will in a savage to 
fight, and a kind word and certain benefit to that savage gets 
up a counter will. The inhalation of the exhilariting gas may 
engender various wills and reveal to view the peculiar idiosyn- 
crasy of the individual: one will dance, and another dash at 
the audience for a fight; a third will debate most furiously, 
while a fourth will sit silently and weep: showing beautifully 



VOLITION. 185 

and clearly that will or desire is nothing more than an impres- 
sion made upon our sensitive being. This subject is to me so 
simple and so clear, that additional illustrations seem really to 
be a loss of time. 

This doctrine of necessity must show to every reader the 
necessity of an early and deeply grounded instruction in reli- 
gious and moral principle, it being as fatally certain that a 
man of early vicious habits and strong passions will yield to 
evil temptations, as one whose passions have been early sub- 
dued, and mind elevated to more noble aspirations, will have a 
will strong enough to resist them. Some authors, seeing the 
power of motives over the will, have granted that the strongest 
motive or temptation offered to the mind will move it, as cer- 
tainly as that the strongest body in motion will overcome the 
weaker, or that the whole is greater than a part. This every 
honest man of clear mind, like Hamilton, is forced to allow, but 
some, like Sir William, fearing that bugbear cry of . fatalism, 
shift off under the cover of conscience. Fashions in education 
are like fashions in dress, as well as in all other things. A 
new cut may at first be uncomely, and even forbidding and 
ridiculous, but soon, from its association with greatness, becomes 
beautiful and irresistible over the will, and the reader, who 
cannot see from this single example the sovereign power of 
circumstances over the production of thought and action in the 
human family, must be blind, indeed, to the influences of his 
own mind. 

Conscience or opinion, which in reality are the same thing, 
are like will, not an original faculty or power, as is falsely 
taught in all the. books on these subjects, but they are effects 
or results, and formed and changed about by the circumstances 
that create them. For instance, how are the consciences of 
judges and juries formed in giving their decision in cases in- 
volving life, liberty, and property. They have no legal or just 
opinion, and consequently no will to act till the case is heard. 
If the testimony be plain and positive, the conscience is clear, 



186 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and the will quick and strong in its decision. Here is a simple 
case that it will apply to every opinion and act of human life, 
and shows beyond contradiction that we are governed by 
opinion, and that "that opinion, the father of the will to act, is 
itself depending upon circumstances, and farther more, that 
those circumstances are themselves dependent upon their ante- 
cedents or appropriate causes, and so on " ad infinitum," and 
hence, as Hamilton says, it is impossible to find the beginning, 
one will succeeding another, and the causes of will being as 
interminable as the sweep of time itself. It is remarkable that 
Hamilton and other intellectual writers, men of great minds, in 
little things should not know that the beginning is in God, 
whose creative wisdom has called all things into existence, and 
who gave life, laws, and motion to the aggregated universe, 
and that all was constituted to act in harmony, and with uq- 
deviating fate. 

It is at once seen that the will or conviction of mind to 
decide any case is not of a self-created, fortuitous, or contingent 
nature, but is dependent upon the testifying facts that make 
the ctise what it is, or upon impulses arising from love or hat- 
red to persons or objects, which loves or hatreds also had their 
foundation in the nature of things. It appears to me to require 
but little expansion of mind to see this relation of causal de- 
pendencies, or the immutable and indissoluble connection -of 
cause and effect, and that the investigation of which must as 
necessarily lead us upwards and onwards to the first great 
cause, as the rounds of a ladder will lead us upwards, or the 
tracing back the causality of man from son to father will, 
through the series of generations, leads back us to Adam, the 
first man, from the hand of God himself Nothing stands alone, 
or has a self and independent existence, but all things bear a 
kindred and causal relation, in time, space, and nature, and is 
doomed to incessant and eternal succession. There is no first 
beginning, no last end, but in God. 

The mirror has no power to create pictures, but can reflect 



VOLITION. 18t 

the impression made upon it, nor has the daguerreotype-plate 
power to alter or obliterate, except by time, as the fading of 
memory from the tablets of the mind. The wax, in like manner, 
is susceptible of ten thousands stamps or impressions, but has 
no will to resist or change them. And so it is, likewise, with 
a blank paper, like the child's mind at birth, without a scratch 
or character of any kind upon it, but languages and whole 
books of science may by and by be written upon it, nor has it 
any more power than the mirror to speak a language that has 
not been taught it, or change the nature of things that are 
impressed upon it. The materials in the mind received through 
our senses may, like the materials in the kaleidoscope, be turned 
about exhibiting endless forms, as in case of imagination, and 
dreams by internal and functional excitations or emotions, and 
we may even become furious madmen by disease, but in all 
these cases the will can do no more than the mirror. The will, 
I have said, is nothing more than a result, the reflection of our 
sensations and thoughts, and the madman's will is just as much 
the result of his unavoidable feelings and thoughts, as the man 
better balanced. And if there be an unerring conscience and 
will independent of circumstances, why ever act amiss as we 
often do, greatly to our own disadvantage, as in our contracts 
and other acts of life. As before stated, if cold, we approach 
a fire, because the sensation in this case is pleasurable, but if 
it burns us, we have an instantaneous and strong will to with- 
draw from it, because the sensation is painful. These are plain 
and simple facts, and apply to every act of life. If we could 
perform any act without a motive or cause, then we should 
have events or effects without causes, and if this be not so, 
which is impossible, then man cannot be free. Every act of 
life proceeds from desire, and desire indicates an object desired, 
which object the will did not create, and consequently is not 
free. 

We hunger and desire food; thirst, and desire water; are 
in love and desire the object ; hate, and avoid the object ; and 



188 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

just SO it is witli every other act of life called free-willing. The 
mind, as previously stated, is a unit, simply with the sensation 
of pleasure or pain, as external or internal agencies may im- 
press us, so that all resolves itself into desires and gratifications. 
God himself is under the necessity of acting according to the 
nature of things, as acknowledged by Clark, Chahners, Dewer, 
Dick, Butler, and other able Divines. For instance, God's will 
is not self-created, or inconsistent with the nature of things as 
he has established them, but is the result of immutable wisdom 
and infinite goodness, and comprehension of what is right and 
best; and truth, honor, and justice being uncreated, underived, 
immutable and eternal, God can not act contrary to the nature 
of these independent entities and paramount motives, for that 
would be acting ignorantly, untruthfully, dishonorably and un- 
justly, which would make him neutrahze his own attributes and 
sink beneath the dignity and honor of a God. So that in ac- 
cordance with his own nature and the laws he has stamped upon 
all things, he is under the moral necessity of acting with an un- 
deviating rectitude of purpose. These are august verities and 
sacred principles, grounded in the constitution and nature of 
things, and that cannot be denied by Christian nor by Deist, 
and which prove that many charges in the Old Testament 
against God — capricious, aribitrary, partial, jealous, false, and 
unjust, cannot be true. 

God^s laws, then, are not right, simply because of his authority, 
or his having willed them, for he willed them not from any 
arbitrary feeling, but because they were in themselves, indepen- 
dently and eternally right. His will, then, was not a self-created 
will, but was promoted by, and founded upon, the inherent, un- 
created, underived, immutable and eternal principles of truth 
and justice. One moment's reflection will prove to us that there 
must have been a perceptive morality. We do not, then, derive 
morality from the mere dictations or commands of the law, but 
from a higher and anterior source, from which all law, if just, 
both divine and human, must be derived. 



VOLITION. 189 

After having shown, then, that God himself had a foundation 
and reason for all he did, shall we assign to man a power to 
originate things from nothing, and to possess a will that is gov- 
erned by no law or rule of action, a broken link in the great 
chain of causality and without the pale of God's government, 
a thingless thing, and an efficient nothing and effectual no-cause, 
that can act without a motive, choose without a choice, and 
decide without a difference, and above all that it can create and 
annihilate itself at pleasure. As puerile and contemptible as 
these doctrines may seem to one who has long studied the laws 
of God, and the phenomena of his own mind, it is not wonder- 
ful that they should be sustained by the mystic schools of theo- 
logy, as best suited to the various isms and dogmatisms of 
these institutions. If will be the result of our judgment, it is 
not free, and if determined by reason^ or the dictates of con- 
science it is equally a result and not an efficient and independent 
entity. We have father seen, as in the decision of judges, juries, 
and in all other cases, that our reasonings, judgments, and con- 
victions'of right and wrong are dependent upon the facts of the 
case, or in the nature of things, so that it must be seen that 
neither the will, nor the foundations of will are free ; all depend- 
ing upon circumstances, and consequently under the laws of 
causality, or in other words, necessity. Even after all the testi- 
mony has been heard and a judgment formed, a speech will 
change that judgment, and, consequently, the conscientious de- 
cision of a jury. Where, then, is this innate and immutable, 
immaculate and divine conscience thus warped and driven before 
the breath of eloquence as a feather before the storm. In short, 
if we had that infalhble monitor, maintained by model copyists, 
we could as well decide without law or testimony, as by any of the 
fortuitous and adventitious aids of life. I at this moment think 
of a case which of itself is sufficient to decide the question, 
whether we have a will, that can, under any circumstances, come 
to our aid, or decide anything without the causes or objects that 
creates that will. Suppose, for instance, we come to the forks 



190 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

of a road, (as I have often done,) of equal size, and no finger- 
board to decide or beget this wonderful will, so independent of 
all causes ; we have no will with us, nor can we summon it to 
our aid, but let a man come along and say this is the right road, 
and then does this paradeful and no caused will rise up and 
claim the honors of an infallible guide. 

If we will disregard the abstract and inexplicable refinings 
to be found in the innumerable and perplexing books upon me- 
taphysics and apply the phenomena of mind to the practical 
purposes of life, we shall find no difficulty in understanding all 
the laws of mentality, which are so few and simple, that a child, 
as before said, may master them in a short time, and that, too, 
by the most pleasing exercise of its own mind. But the schools 
now destroy the mind by stupifying it with memorising abstract 
and technical nonsense, ijistead of enlarging, elevating, and en- 
lightning it by familiar conversations and lectures in science, and 
upon those laws of our nature by which we are to be made 
healthful, prosperous and happy. Our youths are not now 
taught to get rid of local, petty, and personal prejudtees, and 
to believe in one God, one church, and one brotherhood ; but 
are early stultified and blinded to truth and justice by idolatrous 
isms, schisms, and dogmatisms that seers the heart and vitiates 
the soul, thus engendering fiendish and implacable parties, who 
in religion drag each other to the stake, and in violation of the 
laws of both God and man, assume the authority of God's par- 
tial favoritism and approbation, get up bloody wars and sub- 
vert governments, thus making man the greatest enemy of 
man. 

But to return from those reflections upon the results of 
education to the argument, it is admitted by many free-will 
writers, that where the mind is under a preponderating influ- 
ence, that it has no power within itself to change itself and 
make a choice contrary to its own choice, which in reality is 
as impossible as to be and not to be at the same time ; but, 
say those authors, throwing off part of their absurdities, there 



VOLITION. 191 

are conditions of mind, as in a state of perfect equilibrium, 
where things are equal, and there is no choice, then can this 
will come forward and make a choice. In proof of this, they 
offer a case that has figured through their numerous and be- 
wildering volumes, for centuries past. It is simply the old 
stone, balancing the grain, and they have not yet seen how to 
do without it. This celebrated and most notorious case is the 
offering ; the choice of two guineas to a beggar or miser, 
wherein it is contended there can be no difference in the thing 
chosen to create a choice. Now, the choice being made, as 
they think, without a difference, they thus exultingly affirm it 
to have been done without a motive or preference in the thing 
itself; therefore the will is free to act or choose without a 
choice or distinction in the thing chosen. Of all the puerile and 
shallow shifts that I have yet seen in their ponderous works, this 
is certainly most grossly and glaringly false and contemptible ; 
for it must be seen by the most common reader that indiffer- 
ence and choice are wholly incompatible; and, moreover, that 
the question, when properly understood, and as acted upon, is 
simply this — a guinea or no guinea ; for the begger or miser sees 
at once, that if he makes no choice he gets no guinea, and as 
there be no difference, it makes no difference which. This 
case, well known to every man who has studied psychology, 
actually proves the reverse of what it is intended to do, to 
wit, — that will acts upon tire motive for action, or in other 
words, according to the motivity of things, and the immutable 
laws inherent therein. This proposition of a balanced or equi- 
poised will of the two equal guineas reminds me of the Greek's 
Jack that starved to death between two hay-stacks, because 
his mind was thus equal, and he could go to neither. Such 
propositions have a seeming something in them that might 
perplex the pupil or common reader ; but it is like the question, 
whether if one stove saves half the fuel, two, by the rule of 
three, may not save all. These are abstruse and ingenious 
subtilities, it is true, but profitable only to mechanical teach- 



192 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ers, and stupid book-makers. Bring such mystic and mis- 
guided teachers to the light of nature, and they are as blind 
and dumb as owls and bats. I have seen unthinking persons 
perplexed to account for what becomes of all the old moons, 
when the new ones appear ; a problem of equal weight with 
the guinea question and many others that support the schools, 
and make big books, so vague and tangled by mystic and deep 
learning (so called by idolatrous novices), as to be as indeter- 
minable as the tenets of witchcraft, but a short time since so 
gravely and grievously maintained by law. 

There is a grave question that has long divided and dis- 
tracted the learned clergy, and that is still under discusssion, 
whether concupiscence be a crime. Were it not that the 
records are before me, it would seem incredible that those 
archetypes of perfection and conservation of human peace and 
happiness should not have their souls elevated above such 
indecent, petty, and unprofitable manglings. But then again, 
when we consider that, by throwing off all such vague and 
mystic disputations, and reducing theology to a simple and 
practical piety, and a pure-hearted religion, the common people 
would understand the divine law themselves, and come in for 
their heavenly father's inheritance without the deep learning 
and benefit of clergy, we should not wonder at their sustain- 
ing such subtle follies. Those contentious gentlemen might, 
with equal propriety, get up the question, whether hunger, 
thirst, and other passions and emotions of mind and body, be 
crime, or whether black or blue eyes be most criminal ; and 
whether a fit of fever, or of being ugly and deformed, be not an 
unpardonable crime. Had they have put the question, whether 
the indulgence in such passions be a sin, there would have 
been some ground for a discussion ; but as the question stands, 
it is not one worth the notice of a decent man, or one of the 
most superficial thought. 

It is a very common remark by such men, well, I would not 
suffer such and such thoughts to come mto my mind, I would 



VOLITION. 193 

cast them off ; such self-stultified and puerile drivellers have 
not the expansion of the soul to know that the leopard could 
as easily change his spots as we to cast off our nature and its 
thoughts. Why not cast off all disease and mental afiliction, 
and these wandering thoughts that keep us tossing all night 
upon our sleepless beds. Say to the mother, cast off all affec- 
tion and distress for your dying babe, and she will say in her 
heart, you are an unfeeling fool, and so may we say to all 
superficial thinkers and teachers who are wholly ignorant of 
nature and of their own constitutions. I do, from the bottom 
of my heart, pity the youths of oar country who have to 
undergo the drudging and dwarfing influences of our present 
schools. It is memory, memory of arbitrary nothings, till the 
mind is actually incapacitated for those enlarged and ennobling 
thoughts of God and of his mighty works, which alone can 
make us wise and good. If we had schools freed from the 
galling yoke of the dark ages, and teachers that would lead 
their pupils out into the groves, and before the unfolded book 
of nature their bodies would be strengthened, and their minds 
stored with wisdom from the God of reason. If the books 
studied in the schools be worth anything^ they are founded 
upon nature and the eternal fitness of things, and as the mind, 
which we carry with us by day and by night, is the substratum 
of all knowledge, w\ry not apply it to nature itself, and instead 
of a copy of ten thousand copies that may have been corrupted 
by ignorance or design. To show the natural propensity of 
the mind to pursue the laws of God, I make the following 
quotation: — 

" Iq' the pleased infant see its power expand, 
When first the coral fills his little hand; 
Throned in his mother's lap, it dries each tear, 
As her sweet legend falls upon his ear; 
Next it assails him in his top's strange hum, 
Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum; 
Each gilded toy that doting love bestows, 
He longs to break, and every spring expose." 

Lead the little child out into the meadows and along the 

9 



194 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

purling streams, and his propinquity for nature will induce him 
to throw aside his artificial toys, and oh, with what delight 
will he paddle in the water, and play with the peebles. As the 
larks skim the air before him, and light with their soft shrill 
notes upon the tops of the waving weeds, he with extended 
arms struggles after them, and by his joy-lit countenance and 
ecstatic manner speaks in the language of nature: "Oh; see, 
see!" Soon, and a child becomes an ardent florist, and while 
yet young, might become scientific without ever looking into a 
book, and without the aid of the degrading lash and stupifying 
drudging of our commonplace and routine schools. A lisping 
child may be led onwards and upwards in the laws of its creator 
with as much delight as it is known to take in exciting narra- 
tives, ghost stories, and things new to the mind. And should 
it be, that by casting off the stale and mechanical details of 
dead languages and other dwarfing studies, we too early learn 
all that is to be learned in this world, as such teachers say, we 
can direct the mind of the pupil from the dazzling streams and 
verdant fields of earth to the gorgeous and glorious universe, 
where clustering worlds in heavenly harmony roll their bidden 
and eternal rounds. Here may science exhaust her every rule 
and the imagination roam in these untrodden fields of endless 
space and ceaseless time. But I would say to these nut-shell 
teachers and pettyism preachers, who grovellingly, yet gravely 
maintain that the human cranium, contracted as it is, may, by 
the innumerable appartments and departments they have so 
liberally assigned to it, have ample room for all the arbitrary 
and unmeaning trash they have doggedly drilled and crammed 
into the brain, and yet have room for every thing that is to be 
learned in this world. That this assertion will stand as a 
glaring and grievous falsehood, till we shall have learned the 
laws of life and enough of our own constitutions to rid them of 
all disease and bodily afflictions, and leave old age as the only 
outlet of life, and till the statesman and divine shall have 
learned enough of their own minds to live at peace with them- 



VOLITION. 195 

selves, and to unite the human family in one harmonious 
brotherhood, that wars may cease, and all mankind cry out 
with one transporting voice, there is but one father, one faith, 
one people, and one heaven, where God, the author of our 
being, will be our guide and protector through the blissful and 
unending ages of eternity. 

You have a will to raise your arm, as I grant, in accord- 
ance with your own will, biit which I affirm to be in support 
of the doctrine of necessity. The arm, if it could speak, would 
at once, like a ball, struck by another, having no power to resist, 
and feeling its necessity to act, say that it could act in obedience 
to the will, or impelling power. The ball certainly moves with 
freedom, because it is made to move, and the will, in like manner, 
works freely under the influence of its motive cause. The ques- 
tion here, how did your will or desire to raise your arm, come? 
Think a moment and the question will solve itself. Such a de- 
sire would never have come into your head but for the word I 
spoke, defying you to raise your arm, which fired ^ your mind 
and at once excited a spirit of defiance to show that you could 
and would do it. My word, there was the motive or moving 
power, and in like manner will be found an antecedent motive 
for every act of life. I frequently use the word voluntary, 
when I mean necessary, for as it has been established by com- 
mon usage, I cannot express my meaning to others, who know 
no other language without it, and yet it is quite certain to mis- 
lead the pupil, who has ever been taught that the word volun- 
tary means a self-creating and self-controlling something without 
the pale of reciprocal influences or the laws of causation, and 
different from all other things in God's creation. If we had 
always used the word necessary instead of voluntary, the true 
principles of mind would be easily understood, but as it now 
stands, it is only with the most resolute and close-thinking 
minds that argument can counteract this false and mischievous 
conventionalism. The rifle ball, true to its centre, can say, I am 
free thus to drive the center as I please, could it not look back 



196 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

to its source, the rifle; the rifle might say, from me and through 
me, and my mechanism was the work of perfection done, yet it 
was only the passive instrument, for the powder, an antecedent 
power, claims the agency; but when we come to investigate this 
wonderful power, powder, we find that it has no more power 
of itself than the cold iron of the rifle barrel had. The motive 
spark that set it off and gave it all its power may now claim 
the exclusive supremacy in the moving chain of events, but how 
delusive again is this, for though, but for the spark no such 
events could ever have occurred, yet when stript of its preten- 
sions is found not to be self-created, nor has it of itself any pro- 
pelling power. We might thus trace back, in like manner, and 
find an interminable chain of antecedent links that fatally moves 
the link or event, be that what it may, of which we are at the 
moment conscious, and why then say, because of our ignorance 
to look back of the present link, that every conscious act is free. 
God is the author and mover of all things, and has stamped 
upon his works a uniform and undeviating law under which they 
are doomed to act, and though the manifestations may seem 
whimsical, as viewed by the contracted eye of man, they are all 
fated links in the eternal and immutable round of causality. 

After this explanation we will return more fully to the argu- 
ment. I said that my banter was the motive for you to act 
as you did, for without it you certainly would have had no mo- 
tive to do so. Pause here awhile, and think and watch every 
movement of your own miud, and you will find that some sight, 
some sound, from without, or some internal feeling begets every 
desire and act, called voluntary. All this, I think, you will 
readily grant, but still feel that you can do as you please, and 
right here, rests the cruel death of millions of our fellow-mortals, 
in this deception lurks the wily serpent of Eden, who has caused 
all the intolerance, hatred, and persecutions of the world. Every 
man feels, like Sir William Hamilton, though he can offer no 
reason for it, as he himself grants, why it is that he can do as 
he pleases, and consequently infers that his will is free to beget 



VOLITION. 191 

its own motives and inclinations. But strange, yes, truly strange, 
that any man of sound mind, seeing that his own actions are 
always directed to some end, should not know that that end 
was the cause of such action instead of referring it to casual- 
ties that have neither motives nor ends fOr action. The whole 
deception of this long perplexed question is in feeling the un- 
deniable fact that we do as we are inclined, desire or please, 
but search no farther to see why we do as we desire or please, 
or what it is that begets that desire. As we desire to exist and 
feel that we do exist, were it not from palpable contradictions 
we should certainly imagine that our desire begot our existence, 
simply because we desire to exist and do exist, just as we desire 
to act and do act. It is this delusive feeling that begot and 
sustained the doctrine of witchcraft, and the power of spells. 
Desiring the thing and finding the act follow, will naturally 
beget a belief that the desire was the cause of such act. The 
daughter of the Governor of Massachusets, as recorded in his- 
tory, wished that the arm of a certain young lady might be 
shrivelled, and that her tongue might be palsied, and such com- 
ing true, she confessed before the Court, and had her own 
tongue bored, the least punishment then inflicted for witch- 
craft. Hundreds have confessed their guilt before the wise 
courts of England and suffered the dreadful ordeals of fire and 
water, showing how necessary it is to guard against our false 
and imaginative feelings. Amongst the last prominent cases 
brought before the Court of England was one of a poor old 
woman, who was formally arraigned before Lord Mansfield, and 
though the facets were plainly proven by the most respectable 
witnesses, that she had been seen riding through the air upon a 
broomstick, he humanely let her off, by granting that the re- 
spectability of the witnessess proved the fact beyond contradic- 
tion, yet that there was no law to prevent any one who might 
see proper, to ride through the air upon a broomstick. 
This case may be found among many others of similar 
character, amongst the records of the Courts of Great Britain. 



198 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Sight-seeings, great revivals, and stampedes amongst men as 
well as horses all proceed from the same false feelings, A 
feels that B has wronged him even to death, and B, having the 
same feeling towards A, they seek each other's lives, proving 
a deception in that divine and unerring conscience so highly 
extolled by authors, and which every man unfortunately feels 
to be a divinity within him that justifies the cruel persecution 
of identically the same unerring divinity in others. Ignorant 
as we are in the science of medicine, when a patient dies of 
fever, we grant that the fever killed him, yet we-do not think 
the fever self-begotten, but look beyond the active and efficient 
cause of death to an antecedent or remote cause, that begot 
the fever, just as we would to the rusty nail that lacerates the 
nerve, but which is not to be found in the muscles that lock 
the jaw in death. We cannot deny that will or desire is the 
proximate cause of every act, yet if we look back whether in 
every case we see it or not, we are forced by every sound rule 
of induction and the granted laws of science to admit an object 
of desire, as the antecedent and ample cause of desire, which 
shows the will to be an effect, and consequently, like all other 
effects, an unavoidable result, and not a cause, yet like fever 
that kills it in turn becomes an efficient and proximate cause 
of all our desired and willing acts. Thus, then, we see that the 
motive begets will, and will begets action, and this, in reality, 
simple and short as it is, is the sum total of a question, upon 
which thousands of books have been written. The reader must 
here take particular notice of these connections, and by practic- 
ing his own mind, will discover the fact that such is the estab- 
lished relation between desire and deed, or will and action, that 
the moment we desire to act, the nerve of connection with the 
part conveys the power to the muscle. If a sensitive and high- 
toned man be called a liar and a coward, the will to strike is 
at once excited, the spark is put to the powder, and as quick 
as a flash it passes from the pan to the rifle barrel to send the 
ball ; — does the nervous fluid fly from the brain to the arm ? 



VOLITION. 199 

We will or desire to walk, and the legs are put in motion, one 
moving alternately before the other, — the mind now commands 
the legs to stop, and more certainly than a master command- 
ing a servant, do they obey and stop. Yet the mind is as 
separate an existence from the muscles and body, as the master 
is from the servant, and the connection that God has seen 
proper to establish here is only to serve our present domestic 
relation in life, and when that relation shall be severed, the 
mind will exist as independent of the body, as the master when 
separated from the servant. To witness with what marvellous 
skill the great designer has established will and action, exercise 
your mind upon the various muscles of your body. Will to 
flex or extend any one finger fixed upon, and it is instantly 
done, showing incontestably a mental control over our locomo- 
tive and procuratory muscles. God, however, has wisely severed 
the action of the heart, and all our vital organs from any tam- 
perings of the will, and endowed them with separate and more 
inherent energies. Here is actually a universe of dynamic and 
normal forces with vitalizing and renewing powers of which we 
I are wholly unconscious, and through whose dominions our in- 
» tellectual and telegraphic messengers pass from our censorium 
' communi or head office to their destined points of execution 
without interruption. From this short excursion after collateral 
and amusing facts, we will return to the argument. We have 
seen that motives have a full control over our desires or will, 
..iand that will has a like control over our voluntary or motive 
muscles, and analytically or synthetically, there is nothing 
more to be found in this mighty question about the nature of 
;/ volition. Let us try the power of motives a little farther, and 
I test whether our assertions be correct. Suppose yourself sitting 
jl in a house, and it takes fire, and the flames envelope you, would 
I it not prove an ample motive or a sufficient power to put your 
j legs in motion to escape. I hardly think you will deny it, and 
if not, the question is at an end. You may answer, yes, it 
certainly was a sufficient cause, but I was at liberty to stay 



200 MAN FROM HIS CPwADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and perish in the flames, for many a martyr has gone to the 
stake voluntarily and been burnt. True, but these are cases 
full in hand to prove the power of motive and the doctrine of 
necessity. You could have been consumed, had you seen proper, 
but it is certain you did not see proper, and now we turn the 
key that shows the mighty secret. It is, why did you not stay 
and be consumed ? and as an honest man you answer, because 
there was no motive to do so. No motive — true — true — yes, 
true as that there is a God in heaven, and that he has estab- 
lished his laws, mentally and physically, upon fixed and im- 
mutable principles, that cannot be subverted by casualties or 
the whims of man. It was as impossible for you to stay with- 
out a motive, as to fly without wings, the stronger motive as 
certainly controlling your will, as the heavier body will turn 
the scale. The weight in your case was in the scale of self- 
preservation, and it turned you out of the house and saved 
your life. But you say, many a martyr has gone voluntarily to 
the stake to be burned, which is true, and many a man has 
walked voluntarily to the gallows to be hanged, not that he 
preferred death to life, but there being no escape, the stronger- 
motive to die like a hero, rather than be dragged up and hung 
like a dog prevailed. The man who goes to the stake might 
escape, but he goes there selfishly and under the same motive that 
induces a miser to exchange one dollar for two. The martyr simply 
exchanges temporal for eternal happiness, and instead of getting 
two for one, as in the case of the miser, he expects an hundred-fold. 
Perjury to a false faith might release him to a life of disrespecl; 
and self-reproach, and at last sink him down to the undying 
torments of hell ; all of which calculations come in as motives 
to sustain him in his trying but momentary struggles. I could 
not select a stronger case to show the power of motives, and 
how the stronger motive will always prevail, even unto death. 
Thousands upon thousands of the superstitious, have starved, 
and maimed themselves to death under the powerful motive 
of rapturous and eternal joys. The man who commits suicide, 



VOLITION. 201 

has an overwhelming motive to get rid of some agonizing dis- 
tress and hopeless despair. The poor drunkard, whose gastric 
and nervous influences are aggravated to an insufferable ex- 
tent, might seem to act upon reverse principles in seeking 
temporary relief to the hazard of permanent disgrace, want, and 
squalled misery; and yet, his motive acts are perfectly legitimate. 
He bears with the urging wants, and with his sinking spirits, 
till his feehngs are overwhelmed by a depressing melancholy 
that obscures the future. Besides a pri(ie and self-vanity, 
which blinds us from seeing ourselves as others see us, and 
then that blessed hope, delusive as it may be, that buoys us 
up through life, comes in and sustains him with a belief, that 
he will not go like others, and by relieving his agonies for a 
moment, he will not loose the resolution that is ultimately to 
reform him. Under a clear sky, however, he sees himself mir- 
rored as he is, when he shudders and shrinks with horrors from 
the sight, and then it is that he takes Bible-oaths and tem- 
perance pledges ; but soon again, dark clouds overhang his 
ill-fated star, inward storms arise and our poor, frail, and af- 
iiicted brother feeling what we cannot, the irrepressible mon- 
ster gnawing at his heart's strings, yields his every earthly 
prospect and becomes the raving maniac, or a mournful 
melancholy seizes upon him, and depresses him down to hope- 
less despair. He, under these circumstances, takes palliating 
draughts, just as one suffering under an excruciating and in- 
curable malady, is prone to do. Here is a case that shows 
the necessity of an early and well-grounded education in sober 
'and steady habits, and in a knowledge of our constitution of 
mind and body, and the laws of nature, under which we "live, 
^move and have our being." If, instead of spending our lives 
in the study of dead languages and clogging our brains with 
a chaotic mass of other such trifles as ignorant and presumptu- 
ous dogmas and isms in religion, we were put to early training 
in the active and efficient laws of nature that hourly act upon 
our sensibilities for weal or for woe, education, instead of be- 

9* 



202 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ing pedantic and degrading to humanity, would become elevat- 
ing and ennobling. And thus, instead of making an arrogant 
and supercilious display of a vascillating and artistic nonsense, 
we should be well grounded and wise in the immutable and 
eternal laws of our Creator. Were thus this the case, and 
nine-tenths of our canting demagogues, who are more corrupt 
and wily than the devil himself in sowing the seeds of Jacobin- 
ical corruption and dissipation, made inmates of our peniten- 
tiaries, there would yet be some hope of reform from the 
threatened destiny of man, and the pending dissolution of this 
happy government. 

But to return again from results to the argument. You 
have said that you could have sat in the burning house and 
been consumed, if you had had a mind to do so ; but I say it 
was in the nature of things impossible for you to have such a 
mind, and therefore impossible for you to do otherwise than 
you did. In recurring to the more powerful passions and 
emotions of soul that absorb every other feeling, and that 
often leads us as blind captives to disgrace and misery, I will 
mention a clergyman of my acquaintance, who having no reso- 
lution to restrain his amative propensities, and believing that 
even concupiscence was a sin, liis motive for honor, virtue and 
religion was so powerful as to enable him to take the knife 
and emasculate himself. Under an all-absorbing passion of 
revenge, men often take life, and then, under a change of feel- 
ing, equally uncoutrolable, they destroy themselves ; a horrid 
act which no one would commit had he power to feel or do 
otherwise, for he could not desire death but as a dreadful 
alternative from greater evils. 

A very common argument in favor of free wills is this — if 
persons cannot control their will, why should every body think 
so, and blame them for their acts. The only answer to this 
seeming something is, that the error lies in our own selfish sensa. 
tions, so much so, that we hate every thing which gives us pain, 
or that is even unpleasant to our sight, and hence it is that we 



VOLITION. 203 

kill snakes that are not accountable for their nature, and hate 
and punish many a poor creature because uncomely to our sight, 
or round counter to our feelings. God has implanted in us the 
pleasure of sexual connection in order to propagate and per- 
petuate his works, and then a principle of self-defence to pro- 
tect and sustain them. This principle is sensation in the 
voluntary muscles, and technically, the " vis medica.trix naturae," 
in the vital and involuntary functions, which guard us under all 
circumstances, whether asleep or awake. Hence it is that a 
blow aimed at the face, though known to be in sport, causes 
the eye to close and the body flinch, before there it: time to 
think, and contrary to all efforts of will. Prick the hand, or 
apply a spark when asleep, and it consciously flinches from the 
threatened danger. The portending evil from the fire of guns 
or the peals of thunder startle us, and horrible sights mar every 
feeling of the soul. Any thing that obstructs our view to hap- 
piness, or excites painful sensation is at once hated, and hence 
the unreasonable prejudice against the innocent vessel out of 
which we have taken medicine when sick, and the unavoidable 
disgust at serving of soup in a night-vessel, though equally as 
clean and. as pure as a china tureen. We cannot avoid hating 
the looks of a man scabbed all over with small-pox, or leprosy, 
or any deformity, though such unfortunate persons cannot help 
it, and so with every object of life, our fancies, our loves, and 
hatreds, not necessarily being founded in justice, but in our own 
feelings that arise from our individual and varied organizations, 
sensations, and aptitudes to impressions made by the objects of 
sense, or arising from our emotions within. Were love and 
hatred bestowed upon merit, we should have more happy 
matches, and men of moral worth would fill the offices of gov- 
ernment, instead of canting demagogues, who cater to the lowest 
and grossest prejudices of the masses, who are led astray by 
those very feehngs that I am combatting. Hasty and inconsid- 
erate persons will take up and brake an innocent stone against 
which they have stumpted their toe, and the poor and undefend- 



204 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ing brute is unmercifully beaten because unable to bear the 
burden imposed upon him, but this resistance of ours is no proof 
of a just foundation in the nature of things. It is a common 
expression, I hate such a person, or an offending object, not 
from any merit, or demerit, or willful act, but simply because 
such are our feelings and hatred to all who do not act in accord- 
ance with our wishes. Let any man try whether he can keep his 
own temper in riding a stumbling horse, where it is obvious the 
animal cannot help it, and he will find that his flash of passion, 
and the application of his lash to an unavoidable act, was actu- 
ally simultaneous with the inoffensive offence, and before he had 
time /to think or reason upon the injustice of his own conduct. 
I once rode a blind horse on a journey, not knowing him to be 
go when starting, but thought it a happy mishap that would en- 
able me to school my quick and unhappy Irish temper, that had 
led me into many difficulties before I had time to think and 
honorably get out. But to the point. The poor horse was old, 
and stiff as well as blind, and withal, was much afflicted with an 
apothetic and imperturbable temperament, requiring the usual 
antidote of spurs. So down he often went, and as often was, 
the remedy appHed, till by piteous groans I was induced to dis- 
mount, and then, seeing the sweat of toil and blood of cruelty 
dripping from his sides, when a new feeling, that of shame and 
self-reproach, came over me, when a tender pity instead of a 
cruel reproach possessed my soul, and a new motive was got up 
to throw my spurs from me, and a pardon which the injured 
creature could not receive I referred to the great fountain of 
love and mercy, who, I hope, did grant it upon the plea of 
ignorance. Notwithstanding all this, however, every stumble 
after, as quick as a flash of lightning, came a flush and burning 
to my cheek, before I had time to think, showing that unavoid- 
able things, as well as avoidable, when they bring pain upon us, 
get up at once a feeling of resistence, and, on the contrary, when 
they give us pleasure we desire to embrace them. So that we 
will see from the ever varing counter currents and emotions of 



VOLITION. 205 

our own minds, that we should be cautious how we inflict cruel- 
ties upon our fellows, who it is impossible, in the nature of things, 
can feel and think with ourselves, or act to please us. The im- 
partial observance of such facts, then, as I have related, must 
clearlyconvince us, that though God has endowed us with watch- 
ful feelings of self-preservation, and a hatred to everything that 
runs counter to our interests ; that it requires close guarding 
not to become the instruments of great injustice, and the de- 
stroyers of others rights. He has also given us fire and water 
as blessings, when properly used ; yet if not strictly guarded, 
they may become elements of destruction. It must appear, then, to 
the observing reader, that 'we are governed by circumstances, 
and, farther, that we are made to differ as much in mind, as we 
do in body, in constitution, in temperament, in health, and in 
the various vicissitudes of fortune and afflictions of hfe, all 
which tend unavoidably to form the character of man. Our 
feelings, thoughts, and emotions of soul are as diversified as the 
objects that surround us, every new scene in nature, and all the 
changing events of hve, develope in the human mind their appro- 
priate feelings and affections. The fondest love and the fellest 
h^'te, may, alternately, possess the same soul, while the most 
jalignant revenge may be quickly followed by remorse, humility, 
jpentance and forgiveness. 

' How, then, in the face of all these facts, can any author 
r aintain that we are not influenced by circumstances, but that 
we have a divine, instinctive and unerring conscience as a 
guide and a will to execute, that is above circumstances, and 
w^hich can bring the thoughts and movements of all men under 
one undeviating rule and standard of action. We hear such 
men constantly saying, '* Well, I would not let such and such 
feelings trouble me." The mother is told to dry up her tears, 
and to consider the loss of her child a blessing. The lover is 
a fool for entertaining such frivolous and childish passions j 
and the man who has lost his all on earth, is weak to permit 
a regret to enter his mind. Such ignorant creatures are doubt- 

1^ 



206 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

less honest enough in their soothing injunctions, but they 
certainly fly directly in the face of both God and man, in at- 
tempting to subvert the established and undeviating laws 
of mentality, that can no more be severed from the circum- 
stances that beget them, than effects can from the causes which 
produce them. Just as rational would it be to say to a man 
whose hand is in the fire, "Why, my dear sir, I would not al- 
low the idea of pain to enter my head, but sum up resolution, 
and consider the feeling pleasurable;" or to admonish a hungry 
man not to allow so vulgar a thing as the stomach to control 
his feeHngs. 

But still you will afl&rm that you can do as you please, and 
so I say ; and farther, that you cannot, to save your life, do 
otherwise than as you please ; for then, indeed, could you will 
to be free to act contrary to your will, or in other words to 
all the motives and feelings that beget will. To say that you 
can do as you please, is exactly the same as to say you can be 
pleased with what you are pleased, will as you will and do as 
you do. This is certainly talking nonsense and saying nothing 
in favor of free will, or well got up without a cause or motive 
to act contrary to what we please. Pause, and think tVis 
over and over till by and by you will see it clear enough, tly"- 
there is no voluntary act of life without a desire to act ; ail 
farther, that desire cannot exist without an antecedent, t 
object of desire ; and again, that the mind can no more alt;',r 
the nature of that motive or object of desire, or avoid its im- 
pression, than it can alter the nature of a red hot iron npplied 
to the surface, or avoid the pain resulting therefrom. But \^ e 
constantly feel that we can do as we desire, upon the application 
of the object of desire, just as we can feel as we feel upon the 
application of the red hot iron, they both bring results, and as 
unavoidable as the impression of light when it flashes upon 

the eye. 

How the will can be both the determiner and determined, 
I cannot'conceive. Again, for the will to change itself from 



VOLITION. 201 

itself, and make itself what by nature itself is not, is equally 
difficult. And again, for the will to rise without an object and 
fit itself to an object of action without any necessary connection 
or causal dependence upon that object, is, if possible, still more 
absurd. The will to change itself from itself, must make a 
change in itself, and consequently leave itself not itself. So 
we see, that, by the mutation of selfwills, would the identity of 
mind soon be destroyed, as for a thing to change from what it 
was, is to be no longer the same that it was. How a will can 
will a will into existence for a particular purpose, without a 
purpose or motive to will, is again wholly incomprehensible. 
If the will be determined to a certain purpose, it must be by- 
something that determines it to that purpose, which determiner 
is assuredly the motive to action, and nothing else. There 
can be no voluntary action without a will to act, and no will 
to act without a choice or object of action. So that it must 
be found that the object is the foundation, both of will and 
action. There being a preference in every active will, that 
preference is the cause of action, otherwise we must prefer 
nothing to nothing, and as such preference exists in the quality 
and nature of things themselves the will has no independent or 
self-creating powers, that which fixed and determined the mind, 
being just as independent of the mind, as the medicine wh'ch 
acts upon the body is independent of the body. To say that a 
man can will as he wills, or choose as he chooses, or that he 
can follow his own inclinations, is the same as to say that a 
man can grow as he grows, die as he dies, or that water can 
run the way that it does run or is inclined to run. And to 
say that a man can act contrary to his prevailing inchnations, 
is to say that we can choose contrary to our choice, or prefer 
contrary to our preference, or that a thing can be diflfereot 
from what by nature it is. The mind has no more power to 
cause itself to prefer contrary to its preference, or to prefer and 
not to prefer at the same time, than it has to cure a fever, or 
mend a broken leg, or to be and not to be at the same time. 



208 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

He simply has power to do as he wills, but has no power over 
his will to do what he does not wish to do. According to the 
free will doctrine, the good will, in order to get rid of the ill- 
chosen will, determines without a motive or choice to get up a 
will without a choice, or to annihilate itself till it can consult 
with itself upon the best choice. They talk about one will 
suspending another will, but this again must be found grossly 
absurd. Suspension and action being as incompatible as motion 
and rest, for in that suspension there can be no change of will, 
and change and action being the same, there can be no action, 
good or bad, attending a suspension of will. Now, as it has 
J)een shown that all wills spring from motive or design, these 
motives or objects of design exist without and independent of 
the will, or the will before it can will must will to give itself 
a motive to will — which power must be a creative power — no 
such motive or object having existed previous to such will. 
And thus it is seen that these free wills are free Gods without 
God's government and beyond the sphere of his causal de- 
pendencies — that they are governed by no fixed law or rule 
of action, and what is more startliog still, is that they give 
the lie to God's revealed word, that he is the author of all 
things and the law-giver and ruler over all things by fixed and 
undeviating principles. Thus we find that the doctrine of free 
will is encumbered with a thousand vague and selfcontra- 
dictory assumptions, logomachical quibbles, and shallow shifts, 
at war with nature, while that of necessity being founded upon 
the immutable and eternal laws of causality is as truthful, 
simple, and comprehensible as nature itself, being nothing 
more in reality than a conformity to the universal aptitud j, 
fitness and causal dependencies of all things as founded and 
fixed by the hand of Almighty God himself. 

A few illustrations will show how simple it is to have our 
wills excited by the things we will to do. Suppose a desire 
or will comes up in the mind from some prevailing cause to go 
and see a neighbor, how quickly will the legs be put in motion 



VOLITION. 209 

to do so; but if told by the way that the friend is not at home, 
which fact the will has nothing to do with, yet this fact at 
once creates a will for a counter-movement, and just so with 
all the acting, counter-acting, and checkered movements of 
life ; the nature, or quality, or inducement of the thing 
presented for choice being the cause of will or motive of choice, 
having neither room nor apology for self-created wills, inde- 
pendent of, and holding no necessary connection with the 
properties and nature of the things themselves. This is all 
natural and easy, while the idea of the will creating the 
quality sought by the will, and then creating another will to 
obtain that quality, is complicated and unnatural. In farther 
illustration of how wills are got up, I say to a man, sir, you 
are not free to get up and walk, this, at once, creates an am- 
bition, will or desire to walk, and he does so, falsely feeling 
that the will was got up by himself, when, in reality, that will 
was the necessary result of my banter, for no such will would 
ever have existed, or such movement have taken place, but 
for that banter. The very expression of a man, that he is 
free and can do as he pleases, at once betrays the fact that he 
is already possessed with a feeling inclination and ambition 
to do so, which feeling, inclination and ambition are not 
inherent qualities, or veritable things in the mind, but mere 
conditions or modes of mind, produced by the inherent 
quality or nature of things that operate upon the mind. 
The mind of a man may be in a perfectly pacific mode or con- 
dition, and he is called a liar and thief, and the mind is at once 
agitated and bellingerent in its feeling, not from anything in-, 
ternal or from nothing, take notice, but from the words 
spoken. Here were no self-creations of words or thoughts ; 
but you will say, now is the time to show that a man can do 
as he pleases, strike or not strike in revenge, and I will agree 
with you that he can, as he may please, strike or not strike ; 
but his being pleased to act or not act, is to be the result of 
agencies, over which he has no more control than he had over 



210 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the words which excited him. If by constitution he be apa- 
thetic and cowardly, or if by education he is in principle op- 
posed to vulgar conflicts, he will not resist ; but if on the 
contrary, he, by his unavoidabable nature, has an irritable 
temperament, and has by his education a different view of 
what constitutes honor, and obtaining chivalrous cast in society, 
he will certainly, if not a coward, strike. All the temptations, 
passions, and emotions of soul, are alike governed by their ex- 
citing causes. The best tobacco in the world offers no temp- 
tation to me ; and where then the virtue in me, for avoiding 
both it and spirits, for which I have^ as little desire. 
These are, however, irresistible temptations to others, when 
no counteracting inclination prevails. I cannot help, from my 
nature, but dislike both whiskey and tobacco, while others 
cannot, from their nature, avoid liking both. And now it 
will be seen, that the mind is governed in the exercise of faith 
by abstract things, just as our desires are by concrete things ; 
and it moreover must appear, upon investigation, that there 
is neither merit nor demerit in faith ; for where the merit in 
believing that which we cannot help but believe ; and where 
the demerit in disbelieving that which it is impossible to be- 
lieve For instance, that two and two make four, carries a 
conviction to the mind that cannot be resisted, while the asser- 
tion that two and two make six, conveys as irresistible a dis- 
belief; and these simple facts and illustrations show the 
principles upon which all faith is founded. There is every 
degree of natural organization and temperament, every degree 
of education and of maturity and experience in Ufe, every de- 
gree of circumstances that hourly impress us ; and there are 
endless vicissitudes of fortune and aflQiction moulding us to 
the necessity of the case. Sore afflictions beget sadnesis, 
sonow and sighing, while the flush of fortune and buoyancy 
of health produce mirth and laughter, and these vascillations 
of soul are the necessary results or effects of their appropriate 
causes. The Protestant and the Catholic who go to the stake. 



VOLITION. 211 

and the Hindoo who is crushed under the wheels of Jagger- 
naut, ai'e governed ahke bj their unavoidable faith, and each 
are entitled to equal merit, if merit attaches to that which it 
Is Dot in our power to resist ; so that the man who believes 
either in religion or in the common affairs of life, is upon a 
footing with him who unavoidably disbelieves. Now, though 
a man cannot help his belief, we hate him for it, and even put 
him to death, because his unavoidable faith runs counter to 
our own unavoidable faith, and lessens our interests and pro- 
spects of happiness, here and hereafter. We hate a disagree- 
able sound, and things that are unpleasant to sight, smell, 
taste and touch ; and even hate a man because he is homely 
or loathsomely ugly, while we love those who are beautiful 
and charming, though we know they cannot help their nature, 
and that they have neither merit nor demerit in them. These 
illustrations I introduce to explain the constant question 
asked — why are people punished? and everybody think they 
ought to be punished if they could help the belief, or faith, for 
which they are punished. Though it is impossible that God, 
without violating his attributes of love and mercy, can punish 
us for an honest belief, yet it is necessary that man should 
punish man with a view of reform in himself or example to 
society, or confine him to avoid evil to others ; just as we 
would kill a snake, shoot a mad dog, or confine a madman,, 
though all of them act under their unavoidable nature, and 
the injurious power of circumstances. Punishments and ex- 
amples have their necessary influences upon us to do good as 
well as evil, and hence the consistency of punishment under 
the law of necessity. A man who knows he will be punished 
for certain acts, will be necessarily impressed with the fact, and 
the fear which counteracts the temptation to indulge. Know- 
ing, for instance, the fatal fact that fire will burn and water 
drown, will deter us from running into them ; so that it will 
be seen, as before examplified, in the early part of this article, 
it is the doctrine of an early and well grounded education in 



212 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

whatever direction we wish the youth to be guided ; for be 
assured that education has as powerful a government over the 
youthful mind, as the reign has over the guidance of the 
horse. 

A man, I repeat it, can certainly do as he pleases, and he 
cannot do otherwise ; but in every feeling of pleasure to act, 
there is a sufficient, and consequently necessary cause of pleas- 
ure, which cause is not the subjective mind, that cannot act 
upon itself any more than a stone can act upon itself, but is 
without the mind, and an object of desire by the mind, which 
two, v/hen brought into contact, create a new condition of 
soul (this pleasure we so much harp on) to act. This is 
simple, and in full harmony with the universal laws of cau- 
sality, while for a thing to operate upon.atself and bring forth 
a new creation within itself, without materials on which to 
work, is complicated and incomprehensible — yes, impossible. 
How one thing can operate upon another, everybody can un- 
derstand, a-s an acid upon an alkali or salifiable base, where 
the product is a new creation by the union and combined 
agency of them both ; nor is there a conception, action or pro- 
duct of any kind, mental or physical, short of God himself ; 
but what must proceed from the fixed and unalterable laws 
of dualism. It is just as reasonable to suppose that the mind 
has made itself, that it can resist the tragical scenes, and un- 
numbered fluctuations and afflictions, yes and even death it- 
self, to which it is fated in time, as to say it can create or 
originate ideas within itself If the reader will reflect a mo- 
ment, he will see that this would be to make something out of 
nothing ; a thing I have said, and say again, is impossible. 
If a man's thoughts and desires have an existence, they either 
came from something or from nothing ; and as they invariably 
come fitted to some object, end or desire, such object or end 
of desire must have been the cause of that desire. It is just 
as simple and reasonable that the mind should turn to the 
object, as that the needle should turn to the pole. 



VOLITION. 213 

The question under consideration, when properly understood, 
is not whether we can do as we will to do, for that is granted 
to be unavoidable, but what it is that causes us to will or desire 
to do what we do ; and whether that will or desire be in the 
object willed for or desired, or a mere spontaneity of mind, 
having no antecedent or necessary cause of existence, an off- 
spring of nothing; and what is more miraculous, is that a self- 
created will should come fitted to a specific purpose without a 
purpose. This proximate feeling and conscious fact, that we 
can do as we desire, is like the feeling that we can call up to 
mind, by memory, what we desire to do; but in neither of 
which cases do we feel or are we conscious of the remote causes 
that brought these desires to the mind, any more than we feel 
the miasma of fever or the cause of small -pox; though we 
acutely feel, and are conscious of the present action, and see the 
results; just as we do those of will, without knowing what 
caused us thus to will. Now it would be just as rational to 
say that the fever, small-pox, the lock-jaw which proceeds from 
a rusty nail, as well as all other diseases, and excitements of 
our bodies, are self-created things and without a cause, because 
unconscious of a cause, as to say that our mental phenomena 
is without a cause. 

Persons will assert that they can call up by name anything 
they may please, without knowing the fact that that very thing 
is already in the mind, for otherwise they could not name that 
thing as an object of thought. For instance, a man says, I 
will now call up Australia, but except he first thought of 
Australia, how, I ask, could he call for Australia, To call for 
a thing without knowing what to call for, or name a thing 
without already knowing the name of that thing, is too ridiculous 
-to argue about, and just so, in regard to our strong and con- 
scious present feeling of being able to do as we desire, so long 
have we been in the habit of acting from the immediate prompt- 
ings of our feelings, like seeking the cooling water under a burn- 
ing fever, that we never search back for the remote cause, and 



214 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

thus it is that we naturally enough imagine that our own will, 
before we have a will, begets a will, aside from all causes, 
motives, inducements or qualities in the things sought for. One 
may say, I will now repeat the alphabet, but who could ever 
do so, simple as it is, without first learning and knowing it. A 
first comes into the mind by the name being called, or like our 
dreams, by some remote and unconscious association, or by 
internal agencies over which we have no control. Now, as 
easy as the alphabet may seem to one who has been long 
trained and deeply grounded in it, it would be just as impos- 
sible for him to repeat it, without first learning it, as to speak 
a foreign language, by the creative exercise of this wonderful 
will, which is independent of God's established and unalterable 
laws of causality. And more to the point, even after we have 
learned the alphabet in accordance with God's appointment, 
we cannot repeat it without a desire or will so to do, and as 
there are no effects without causes, take notice, this desire or 
will must be grounded in something that produces it, as the 
outward command through the ears, or some internal associa- 
tion, over which we have no more control than we have over 
the vital functions that sustain us, or the pulsations of the heart 
itself. These obvious facts may be granted, and yet the question 
asked, whether, when such inclination, desire or will arises, we 
may not have resolution to resist it, by a counteracting and 
stronger will; to which I answer, certainly, we may, if a stronger 
will should arise from a stronger motive, not to obey the com- 
mand than to obey it. Suppose, for instance, a man is com- 
manded by high authority to do a'certain act, he is, at once, 
given a will, by the command, so to do, but, as in cases of 
martyrdom, if a silent command arises within him, from a belief 
that God's coilimand is greater than that of man, a counter- 
acting and paramount will will certainly control his actions, 
and now, though the first command was from without and the 
second and prevailing from ruminating causes within, they were 
both the result of actually existing and uncalled for causea 



VOLITION. 215 

Kor is the result in such cases any more obscure or difiBcuIt 
of comprehension than the testimony which forces conviction to 
the mind, the will to do or not to do, being the invariable 
result of prompting passions, or of delivered judgment, founded 
upon anticipated results, in neither of which causes are there 
any self creations of wills without causes, the will being as un- 
avoidable a result as was the cause, both being as firmly linked 
together as is the endless and eternal chain that binds God's 
vast and harmonious universe. We may not see or feel but 
the first, second or third moving links, but could we trace them 
back, they would unerringly lead us on and on to the throne of 
God, the original seat and foundation of all causality. Here, 
by infinite wisdom and boundless power, were all God's laws, 
both mental and physical, designed and irreversibly fixed 
beyond the power of earthly vanity to subvert. 

Thus having established the supremacy of God's unalter- 
able laws, all we have to do, is to understand and obey them. 
If we plant and pray to God to cultivate for us, he will not 
do it; and should we plunge our beard into the Ocean, and 
cry. Lord save! he will not heed us, nor will he even admin- 
ister an antidote to a poison, though ignorantly innocently 
taken. Those laws of our vital and normal existence are 
fatally fixed, and the health and happiness of man depends 
upon studying them well, a thing least thought of by the 
present artistic age, when men with their idle hypotheses, 
religious creeds, and political squabbles distract the human 
mind. To these debasing influences over the mind, may be 
added the stultifying nature of dead languages and unmeaning 
technicalities, which engross all the early and more suscept- 
ible portion of our lives. Yes, this is unquestionably true, 
and the reason why we become dupes to patent pills and reli- 
gious creeds, and the ready tools of political oppression. In 
consequence of the neglect of God's laws (science) in early life, 
the benighted mind seeks turbid streams, and pools of art, 
while the limpid fountains of nature flow sparklingly around 



216 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

US, and the glowiog light of heaven radiates to the utmost 
bounds of God's universe. Were we to study well those laws, 
to which we are hourly subject through life, the Doctor, then, 
would practice upon a science, and we should not daily be- 
mourn the loss of our friends, butchered through ignora.nce, 
for old age would, as certainly as we now exist, be the only 
outlet to life, for, as sure as there is a God, there is a law of 
hygiene, ample for every morbid influence that can assail us. 
The wonderful discoveries, which have been made in science, 
as the telegraph, for instance, can leave no longer doubt of the 
powerful agencies and counteracting agencies that are at play 
around us and of which we are wholly ignorant. In proof of 
our medical ignorance, and as a reproof to the vanity of our 
little technical popinjays, I introduce the following introductory 
lecture by the great Magendie of France, the ablest and most 
renowned physician the world has ever produced: — 

"Gentlemen: Medicine is a great humbug. I know it is 
called a science — science, indeed ! It is nothing hke science. 
Doctors are mere empirics, when they are not charlatans. We 
are as ignorant as men can be. Who knows anything in the 
world about medicine ? Gentlemen, you have done me the 
honor to come here to attend my lectures, and I must tell you 
frankly, now, in the beginning, that I know nothing in the 
world about medicine, and I don't know anybody who does 
know anything about it. Don't think for a moment that I 
haven't read the bills advertising the course of lectures at the 
Medical School: I know that this man teaches anatomy, that 
man teaches pathology, another man physiology, such-a-one 
therapeutics, such-another materia medica. — Eh Men! et apres? 
What's known about all that? Why, gentlemen, at the school 
of Montpellier (God knows it was famous enough in its da}' I) 
they discarded the study of anatomy, and taught nothing but 
the dispensary; and the doctors educated there knew just as 
much, and were quite as successful, as any others. I repeat 
it, nobody knows anything about medicine. True enough, we 



VOLITION. 21 T 

are gathering facts every day. We can produce typhus fever, 
for example, by injecting a certain substance into the veins of 
a dog — that's something; we can alleviate diabetes; and, I 
see distinctly, we are fast approaching the day when phthisis 
can be cured as easily as any disease. 

" We are collecting facts in the right spirit, and I dare say, 
in a century or so the accumulation of facts may enable our 
successors to form a medical science; but, I repeat it to you, 
there is no such thing, now, as a medical science. Who can 
tell me how to cure the headache ? or the gout ? or disease of 
the heart? Nobody. Oh! you tell me doctors cure people. 
I grant you people are cured. But how are they cured ? 
Gentlemen, nature does a great deal. Imagination does a 
great deal. Doctors do — devilish little — when they don't do 
harm. Let me tell you, gentlemen, what I did when I was 
head-physician at the Hotel Dieu. Some three or four thousand 
patients passed through my hands every year. I divided the 
patients into two classes: with one, I followed the dispensary, 
and gave tbem the usual medicines, without having the least 
idea why or wherefore; to the other, I gave bread-pills and 
colored water, without, of course, letting them know anything 
about it — and occasionally, gentlemen, I would create a third 
division, to whom I gave nothing whatever. These last would 
fret a good deal — they would feel they were neglected, (sick 
people always feel they are neglected, unless they are well 
drugged — les imbeciles ! ) and they would irritate themselves 
until they got really sick; but nature invariably came to the 
rescue, and all the persons in the third class got well. There 
was a little mortality among those who received but bread- 
pills and colored water, and the mortality was greatest among 
those who were carefully drugged according to the dispensary. '^ 

This is pretty plain speaking for a doctor. 

And were Divines in like manner to become thorouorh 

o 

bred students of nature, instead of burthening their minds 
with dead languages and theological follies, they would neither 

10 



218 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

respect the religious codes and dogmas of men, nor glory m 
their own folly ; — no, nor could those detestable demagogues, 
the veriest varlets of earth, humbug a community thus en- 
lightened by the elevating and ennobling study of God's 
harmonious and glorious works, that will unerringly lead us to 
health, to happiness, and to Him. But we will return from 
consequences more directly to the argument, and show how 
we are influenced by physical causes that make us happy or 
miserable in this world. 

The influence of disease upon the mind, every man in the 
community has both seen and felt. To a sick man, the luxuries 
of life loose their zest — nothing tastes or smells right, and 
sights and sounds are disagreeable. All his feelings are as 
whimsical as his appetites. The brave man becomes timid, 
and the imperturbable and generous soul becomes irritable 
and selfish. The patient and affectionate mother grows fret- 
ful and captious towards her children. Every vocation and 
profession in life looses its interest, and our resolutions for 
any enterprise become weak and capricious. The aberrated 
mind is dark and vacillating in its religious and moral affec- 
tions. Even tooth-ache, gout and sick head-ache will spoil 
the temper and greatly afflict the mind ; and ! how often 
do we become silently demented or harrowed up to raving 
maniacs, while others sink under the crushing weight of accu- 
mulated afflictions down to a settled and hopeless melancholy. 
Now, if these afflictions of mind be unavoidable and incurable 
by the will, the will cannot be free to control itself or the des- 
tinies of the mind, but is under the laws of necessity, which 
at once establishes the doctrine I contend for. 

To show how we are led captive through the dark and 
checkered paths of our anxious and toiling existence here, not 
by the power of disease, as above named, but under the guid- 
ance of natural and normal influences ; I will give a few addi- 
tional examples. Our journey of life is at best but a day, and 
affords us but little knowledge of the innumerable and wonder- 



VOLITION. 219 

ful agencies in nature that play around us, and in which and 
through which we unconsciously live and move, being seduced 
by more sensible objects to follow our veering fancies. We 
set out in the morning of life, unconscious of guilt and fearless 
of consequences ; the whistle, the drum and hobby-horse, 
with the nightly legends of the nursery, filling our cup of 
innocent and early joys. Little do we think how " one genera- 
tion passeth and another generation cometh," nor have we yet 
any knowledge of our own flitting and transient lives ; but on 
we journey, joyously picking up by the way the early flowers, 
and chasing the butterfly with his gilded wings, which gives us 
more rational delight than a monarch can receive from the 
temporal bawble of jewelled crown. Charmed with every 
changing scene of nature, we are led through flowery lawns, 
by purling brooks, and into fragrant and warbling groves 
where our enchanted minds are lulled into elysian reveries, 
and our thoughts elevated far above the vulgar realities of 
life, not dreaming that soon, and we shall enter dark and 
dreary abodes of sorrow, where we are to be afflicted by cares 
and torn by contending passions. Fresh in youth, buoyant in 
health, and animated by the hope of future bliss, we still pur- 
sue our unclouded path, nor think we are so near the troubled 
ocean of life and the vale of tears. All has been serenity 
and sunshine ; but now, and the noon of our day has come 
with a clouded sky, and the troubled elements are warring 
around us. The day is far spent in the toys of life, and the 
unwelcome fact is forced upon us, that we have a living to 
make ; and now it is that envy, pride and ambition enters the 
unstained and tranquil soul. The tumults of life now begin ; 
and hope and fear, love and hatred, and joy and grief, with all 
the distracting passions, alternately occupy the soul, and im- 
periously direct the will to this, that or the other act. 

As the evening of our journey approaches, circumstances 
again change and throw us upon a smoother path. The stimu- 
lus of ambition is gone, and the heart grows cold to the world. 



220 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

The lengthened vista is closing upon our sight, and the memory 
is fast fading of the past. Our hearts beat faintly, and we feel 
that every pulsation brings us one step nearer to the brink of 
eternity, when our journey will be at an end. The pleasures of 
early life have fled for ever, and we worship the Lord of nature 
no longer in his flowery meads, his flowing streams, and shady 
bowers, but seek him in a higher sphere, far, far beyond the con- 
fines of earth, where we hope for a happy haven of rest when 
our stormy voyage shall be over. The heart that once glowed 
with love, with humanity, and kind affections, has been left but 
to sorrow. Every tender tie to earth has been broken and our 
friends have passed to worlds unknown. The lone and feeble 
soul has now no consolation but in religion, when it again be- 
comes firm, and tranquil, and buoyant in its glorious hopes, which 
warms it with seraph fire and wings it for its eternal flight. 

Now all these vassalations of mind and workings of will to 
suit the occasion, must have been from the progress of age, and 
the power of circumstances, farther showing, what I think has 
been already amply proven, that the will is governed by circum- 
stances, and, consequently, under the law of necessity, which is 
not an accident, or broken link in the chain of causality, but a 
fixed and unalterable law given by God himself to preserve the 
unity and harmony of his universal dependencies upon the one 
great will. 

I now think it must be granted by every impartial reader, 
that my arguments in this Essay have established the following 
axioms ; and first — That God's foreknowledge of man's conduct, 
and man's freedom from all fixed rules of action, is impossible ; 
for how could God certainly know a thing to be, that might op 
might not be ; the ten thousand casualties of a self-creating and 
independent will affording no fixed rule by which to antici- 
pate events. Even we short sighted creatures can, by the fixed 
and unalterable laws of our solar system, calculate eclipses to 
the minute, for thousands of year's to come, but were those 
laws fortuitous, or left to chance, no such calculations could be 



VOLITION. 221 

made. Even every game of chance, improperly so called, has 
its laws by which it is governed. No die was ever cast that 
did not have its reason and cause, why it fell this way instead 
of that; but when ignorant of causes, we refer them to mystery* 
miracle, and chance, or something beyond natural law and 
human power. We also know by the determinate laws of the 
vegetable kingdom, that an acorn will bring an oak, and a 
peach seed a peach and not an orange, but did acorns bring 
oranges or apples, as they might whimsically determine, by an 
almighty power of self-creation, such as is given to the will, 
above all law, and beyond the pale of God's government, 
neither God nor man could anticipate or have any positive 
knowledge. No Christian, however, can consistently maintain 
the doctrine of casualties, or contend for a free and sovereign 
will independent of, and above all law and rule of action ; as 
in so doing he would deny the truth of God's prophesies, for 
as above shown, neither God nor man can certainly know a 
thing to be, that may or may not be, as chance shall determine. 
The very affirmative of the proposition is an impossibility, that 
subverts itself ; for it is the same as to say, that God can 
know a thing to exist that has no existence, or that he can 
anticipate an event which has no antecedent cause or law by 
which such an event may be brought about. If the reader will 
but reflect for a moment, he will see how ridiculous the idea 
is, that God can certainly know that a man will do a thing, 
when the man is at liberty not to do it ; God himself, in such 
case, being thrown into the vortex of fortuity and left without 
a law or rule of action by which to anticipate events. No 
event which he prophesied, yet had any existence, but he knew, 
by the law of mentality, with as much certainty as we know 
by the laws of motion, that the moving of the first and pre- 
sent link of a well connected chain, will move every other link, 
it matters not how distant the links and endless that chain may 
be. But now suppose, there were no laws of causality, or con- 
necting links, how could God or man prophesy upon future 



222 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRATE. 

events, or know how far the chain would move. The man 
who designs and constructs a clock to run eight days, knows 
that it will run eight days, but he who knows nothing of the de- 
sign, or connecting wheels and moving power, could have no such 
knowledge. And now, here I must be indulged in correcting a 
great error, which prevails, even amongst philosophic men. 
It is often taunted against those who teach the doctrine of 
moral necessity, that the fore-knowledge of an event does not 
make that event. For instance, the man who calculates an 
eclipse does not make that eclipse ; and were God, at this mo- 
ment, to enable me to see future events, ray knowledge of such 
facts would not, necessarily, have any agency in bringing them 
to pass, Now, though this is all true, it is a miserably shal- 
low and shameless shift, and has nothing to do with the case 
in hand, any more than a man's knowing he is made by a 
superior power has to do with the making of himself. Such 
tiros should be made to know, that there is a vast diiference 
between the creator and the created, the designer and the 
thing designed, and that though man may become acquninted 
with many of the laws of God, it is no proof that man made 
those laws, I grant that my knowing, a clock will run eight 
days does not make it run eight days ; but I also know that 
the man who designed and made that clock, made it to run 
eight days, as otherwise it would not run eight days. Yes, 
and I farther grant, that my knowing the sun will rise at a 
certain minute to-morrow morning does not make it do so ; 
but with equal certainty do I know, that the God who made 
that sun, made it to shine, and gave it its laws, by which it 
is governed. God has brought nothing into existence which 
he did not, in his pre-conceived plans and wise designs, pur- 
pose so to do : and there can, therefore, be no broken links 
in his eternal chain of causality ; but all things work, as in the 
case of the clock, just as they were made to work. The hue 
and cry, and vulgar prejudices got up against the doctrine of 
Decessity, is that it makes God the author of sin. The doc- 



VOLITION. 223 

trine I have taught throughout, is a conditional necessity ; but 
take the ground of the strongest fatalist, and I ask in com- 
mon honesty, where is the difference, so far as either God or 
man is concerned, what instruments God employs in the 
punishment and death of men ? Whether he uses a revolver, 
throws an old tree upon him, kills him with a slow fever, or 
dispatches men in mass, by earthquakes, wars, pestilence, 
and famine ? If God can be made guilty of sin in one case 
for killing a man, he is equally so in every case, it mattering 
not whether he uses one man as an instrument in killing an- 
other, or employs more protracted and painful means. We 
know that the best of men on earth have suffered greatly, and 
that we have many unavoidable afflictions ; but it is our duty 
to bear patiently with them as did Job, and believe, as I 
firmly do, that all will work together for the best. God has 
bestowed upon us many blessings, showing that he is kind and 
careful of us, and will, as he has promised, in the maturity of 
time, and in the consummation of his ultimate plans, make us 
eternally happy. We should, as observing men, grant what we 
cannot honestly deny, and offering no apology for things we 
know nothing about, leave the how and the why to God him- 
self. Now, it cannot be denied, as in the case of the clock- 
maker, that if God foresees what a man will do, and he makes 
that man, that he makes him to do that thing ^ for if he had 
made him otherwise, he would, in accordance with his nature, 
have acted otherwise. Every thing is made to be what it is, 
and to do what it does, -as otherwise God is not a wise God, 
and has made things in vain. Many weak-minded, but good 
men, have, in order to get God, at they think, out of this 
dilemma, robbed him of his sovereignty, and denied to him a 
fore-knowledge of his own works, thus unintentionally main- 
taining a system of atheism. There are but two views that 
can be taken, in regard to the creation and government of 
the universe : that it was either created and is governed by 
an all-wise, powerful, immutable and eternal God, who fore- 



224 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

saw all things, and created nothing in vain ; or it made itself, 
and is governed by chance, as free-willers and fortuitous 
philosophers would have it. 

Axiom 2. — That the doctrine of casualism and self creating 
powers leads to atheism, for if God be not the creator and 
governor of all things, then may things create and govern 
themselves, as pantheists affirm. 

Axiom 3. — That God fits means to ends, and comprehend- 
ing all things from eternity to eternity in one most perfect and 
unalterable view, his fore-knowledge of events is as certain and 
unerring as man's after-knowledge of things, which, having once 
taken place, can never be altered any more than time can be 
called back, and things made naught that are. 

Axiom 4. — That there is as indissoluble a connection be- 
tween motive and action, as between cause and effect, and that 
all things in God's vast and harmonious universe are dependen- 
cies upon the one great and moving cause. 

A^iom 5. — That both God and man, as certainly exist 
under a law of necessity as they exist in time and space, neither 
being able to act rationally and voluntarily without a motive 
in view and end to be obtained, which motive in view and end 
to be obtained must be the ground and reason of such action. 

Axiom 6. — That motives or inducements are correlative, 
are not real substantial and independent entities, and do not 
inhere in the mind any more than light and sound or other sen- 
sations, but in the motive objects, over which the mind has no 
more control than has the powder over the spark that explodes 
it, or the wax over the seal which impresses it. 

Axiom t.^That God, being absolutely perfect in his un- 
created, underived, immutable, eternal, and consequently un- 
avoidable nature, every motive to action must be for the best, 
and that there is not, therefore, any evil in God's universe, but 
that all apparent evils are dispensations of mercy and end in 
universal good. He, who maintains an all-wise, all-powerful, 
and good God, cannot but grant this doctrine of optimism, 



VOLITION. 225 

which affirms, that all things are wisely ordered, and ordered 
for the best. 

Axiom 8. — That to say that God's pre-science is perfect 
and infallible, and yet, that the connecting links of causality or 
laws by which events are to be brought about, are fallible, or, 
in other words, fortuitous and uncertain, is ridiculously absurd, 
for God himself cannot see the evidence of a thing, which in 
itself has no evidence, or antecedent cause of existence. 

Axiom 9. — That an effect does not create its cause, the 
child its father, nor the will its motive, but that the cause 
produces its effect, the parent the child, and the motive its 
wiU. 

Axiom 10. — That the motive power or quality in objects, 
which beget our volitions, are inherent in those objects, and not 
created by the mind, and consequently independent of it, as for 
instance, the quality of sweetness is in the sugar, heat in the 
fire, and coldness in the ice, the sensation only or effect being 
impressed upon the mind, while the quality is as certainly in 
these objects as the impression made upon the wax was in the 
original seal. 

Axiom 11. — That it is impossible to act voluntarily with- 
out a motive or desire so to do, and as the quality desired and 
motive to act is in the object of desire, which begets the will, 
the will does not beget itself, and consequently cannot, m the 
nature of things, be free. 

Axiom 12. — That the doctrine of spontaneity and a self- 
creating power is incompatible with the sovereignty of God, 
and with the unity and harmony of his universal and immutable 
laws. 

Axiom 13. — That it is impossible for God himself to know 
a contingence, as to do so, would be the same as to know a 
thing to be certain, which, at the same time, he knows to be 
uncertain, involving the absurd idea and impossibihty of to be 
and not to be at the same time. 

Axiom 14. — That to say, because we act from our unavoid- 

10* 



226 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

able nature and the force of circumstances under which we are 
placed, that our lovely acts are not to be loved, nor our hate- 
ful deeds not to be hated, is a false position, when all will ac- 
knowledge that God is, in his unavoidable nature, absolutely- 
perfect, pure, and holy, and that his acts are in accordance 
with his nature, and yet that we adore him, because of his 
natural perfections. The angels are, also, so confirmed in holi- 
ness, as in the nature cf things, to have no will or wish, but to 
act in accordance with their inherent nature. From these facts, 
might we, with equal propriety, say that we give no thanks 
either to God or to holy angels for acting just and holy, be- 
cause it is their nature so to do.- In like manner, to,o, might 
we say, that we cannot love a lamb or an infant, a beautiful 
woman or any other lovely object, because it is their nature; 
or that we should not hate a serpent, because it cannot help 
but be a serpent. Our passions and emotions are always suited 
to the nature of the objects or actions, whether voluntarily or 
involuntarily. Gold is gold from its unavoidable nature, and 
yet we admire it more than lead, which cannot help its nature. 
Christ, himself, was under a law of necessity in acting out the 
will of the father, in his pre-conceived and determined plan of 
redemption, and therefore, according to the doctrines of free- 
willers, was entitled to no more thanks than was Judas, who 
betrayed him, as they both acted in perfect obedience with 
God's own plans, positive decrees, and unerring predictions. 
We cannot help disliking those whose hearts God wilfully 
hardened, as instruments for certain purposes, and of loving 
those who God made perfect. No Christian can help but ad- 
mire Paul, though he was forcibly checked in his wilful acts of 
wickedness, and compelled by a divine and resistless power to 
be good. 

Axiom 15, — That in every act of volition, an object of 
choice or desire must be presented to the mind, and that in as 
much as the quality or exciting nature of that object begets 
the will, the will is not free to beget itself, without a motive, 



i 



TOLITION. 22t 

wish or end in view, which at once explodes the doctrine of 
self-creating, free and motiveless wills, and bringing the mind 
back within the pole of divine influences, restores to God his 
sacred, immutable and eternal laws of causality. It is true, 
that we may, yea, must do or not do, as the strongest motive 
may bias the mind and direct the will, but in this case again, 
as in every other, we have no alternative but to do or not to 
do. If the motive for action be wicked, and the man be a 
good man, the motive not to act will control him; but if the 
temptation be strong, and the man insensible to virtuous deeds, 
he will yield to the temptation, ^ow this case, simple and 
plain as it is, represents every other imaginable case that can 
occur through life. It clearly shows that the good man and 
the bad man are governed alike by motives, and that the con- 
troling power of those motives arise from ten thousand hidden 
agencies. The mind is biased and the will directed from ori- 
ginal organization, education and our endless degrees of sensi- 
bility, as well as the peculiar state of mind, and our ever vacil- 
lating condition of health. It is not probable that any two 
men on earth can be made to think alike, upon all subjects, 
any more than they can be made to look alike in every form 
and feature; and yet, yet, how sad to say, we have cruelly 
strove to crush all mankind into one mould, made by our own 
vile prejudices, but for which God never created man. It- 
would be just as rational to affirm, because we feel and are 
conscious of the possession of life, that we gave ourselves that 
life, as to say, because we feel volition to arise in the mind, 
that we produce it, or that it is free to create itself. It re- 
quires close observation to see that the cause of determination 
in the mind must be as separate from it, as any other cause is 
from its effect, and that it must preceed the will or act deter- 
mined on. In every choice there is a causal and indisoluble 
connection between the choice and the thing chosen. Every 
thing that exists must have a cause of existence, and as voli- 
tions rise by myriads, invariably and unerringly fitted to the 



228 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

objects and ends in view, those objects and those ends to be 
obtained must be the cause of such volitions. The kindred rela- 
tions and causal dependencies of our volitions, are often obscure 
and even unseen, yet they, like the occult and remote causes, 
both of mental and bodily disease, must have had their exist- 
ence, and have acted upon us, in order to produce their effects. 
Our ignorance of causes, can, therefore, be no argument against 
their existence, and in favor of effects without causes. 

Axiom 16. — That because all our actions proceed from the 
will, we naturally and unwarily suppose that the will arises 
from the will itself, which brings us back to the old absurdity, 
and often repeated impossibility of a thing creating itself, for, 
as to do so, would be to move without a motive, and to design 
itself, and create itself, before itself had an existence. 



REASONING. 

TJpHAM in his "Philosophy of Mind," (page 190,) says : — 
" That without original suggestion we could not have any knowl- 
edge of our own existence, and without consciousness, we should 
have no idea of our mental operations, and without judgment," 
which he says is also a distinct source of knowledge, " there 
would be no reasoning ; and unassisted by reasoning, we could 
have no knowledge of relations." " Reasoning, therefore," he 
says, "is to be regarded as a new and distinct fountain of 
thought, which, as compared with other sources of knowledge, 
just mentioned, opens itself still farther into the recesses of in- 
ternal intellect." " Reason," he says, " is a distinct source of 
knowledge, that enables the internal mind with a new and valu- 
able form of ideas, and that it brings to light hidden truths, 
that no other faculty could do." 

I have quoted TJpham as a popular work, and one that 
pretty fairly embodies that chaotic mass of nonsense to be 
found in our text's books that our schools generally teach. All, 
in common with Upham, assign to the mind a number of facul- 
ties and powers, which they say can create, call up, handle, and 
turn about, or set aside, ideas at pleasure. It is true, but hard, 
yes truly hard, that our youths, intended for future usefulness, 
should be compelled to memorize and answer, as the learned pig, 
to all this abominable and wholly unmeaning jargon of external, 
internal minds, and of intellectual faculties and powers, that 
have no archetypes in nature. 

The pupil is perplexed and confounded by these external 
and internal intellects of intellectual states of mind, and external 
internal knowledge, original, secondary, and subordinate facul- 



230 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ties, active and complex powers, with the classifications, divisions 
and sub-divisions, and abstractions, making, as the reader can 
see, bj looking into those books, an ordinary volume of index, 
taking up, most unfortunately, as much space as the entire 
science of the human mind should occupy. These fountains of 
knowledge, and their almost innumerable departments, powers, 
and faculties within our little heads, are greatly more extensive 
than the " Mammoth Cave." Indeed, these fancied divisions of 
minds have carried to such a ridiculous extent, that a great 
preacher and divine teacher, Dr. Alexander, Professor of 
Theology at Princeton, has affirmed in his book of " Moral 
Science," "that the corrupt principles of a man does not vitiate 
the essence of the soul," which must mean that each of those 
independent faculties or powers acts for itself, and contrary to 
the desire of the soul. This doctrine of the great Professor, 
though glaringly false and mischievous, is but the legitimate 
consequence of the numerous divisions of an indivisible thing, 
and the many independent faculties, not to be found in the mind, 
but taught in all the works on moral and metaphysical philo- 
sophy. When such mendacious doctrines then can be maintained 
by such minds, and enforced by their divine mission and official 
authority, what can we expect better from the tyro in science, 
or a community indoctrinated in such institutions. 

As I have before affirmed, the mind is a unit, indivisible and 
unextended, occupying some portion of the solid brain, needing 
no great cavities or numerous spaces for the location of those 
many powers and faculties. The doctrine then taught of its 
many parts and distinct divisions, is at variance with facts and 
ridiculous in its tendencies. Those who believe in the spiritual- 
ity and identity of the soul, cannot consistently teach its ma- 
terial divisibility and inidentity. It is granted by all thinkers 
that no two objects or actions can occupy the same space at 
the same time, and how is it possible then, for the mind occupy- 
ing but one space, it being an identity per se, can occupy or en- 
tertain within the same space all the faculties, powers, and dis- 



REASONING. 231 

tihct agencies, so ludicrously allotted it by metaphysical writers. 
What I here teach from the book of nature, and have striven 
throughout to maintain, will, when all the paper books of men- 
tal philosophy on earth shall be thrown aside as trash, stand 
as a simple, immutable, and eternal work of God himself. The 
factitious works of men have ever led us blindly astray from the 
paths of truth, and distracted us in all things of opinion or faith. 
The simple fact is, that other than metaphorically speaking^ 
there is no such thing as faculties or powers, separate and apart 
from the oneness and essence of the mind itself Sensation or 
feeling is this only characteristic of the sentient and percipient 
being, that exalts the mind above common organic matter, and 
gives us all our knowledge. In short, feeling is the mind itself, 
and the ultimatum of every thing known in regard to it, 
and it is that and that alone, which gives us all the knowledge 
we have of our own existence and of the world around us. 
When deprived of it we are dead, the soul having departed 
from its tenement of clay. Sensation is the " vis medicatrix 
naturae," and conservative power of normal action. From it 
arises the universal desire for happiness and self-preservation, and 
more than this, all the kind feehng and sympathy for our fellows 
are prompted from what we have felt or suffered ourselves, and 
in short, but for the feeling we have, we could not feel for others. 
Were it not for feeling or sensation, which God has interwoven 
nto our very constitutions, we could not be moral agents, as 
we should have no sympathy for others, nor could we feel our 
obligations to our Creator. All the force of education and our 
hopes in life are founded upon it, and without it, rewards and 
punishments would be of no avail, as we could not be punished in 
Hell, nor could we enjoy the gifts of Heaven. Whence, then, 
that inveterate mass of prejudice in authors, John Locke except- 
ed, against the doctrine of sensationalism, but from the con- 
temptible and iniquitous arrogance of man, who has condemned 
the plain and simple laws of God as low and brutal. 

I hope to make the doctrine of sensationalism so plain, 



232 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

that the reader may think it untrue that it was ever opposed. 
But in this he would be mistaken ; for every writer, who has 
attempted to sustain it, has been denounced as a slanderer of 
his species, and borne down, not by argument, but by ribaldry 
and Billings-gate abuse. Those ecstatic and transcendental 
authors, who gratuitously assume for the soul inherent and 
divine intelligence, independent of our gross senses and the 
influences of the external world, hold sensation or feeling to 
be a vulgar thing, belonging in common to man and brute. 
I give these facts in the history of our race, to show how the 
supercilious vanity of man will blind him to those sacred 
truths that God has so plainly made manifest to his unpre- 
judiced reason. In China, this ungrounded pride, and unjust 
prejudice, is even more inveterate than in our own country. 
They hold that their imperial intellects flow from a higher 
and purer fountain than those of the lower cast ; and hence it 
is that they feel contaminated by the very touch. A book of 
true philosophy there, would be committed to the flames, and 
the author with it. If these startling examples, with the fact 
I have shown of the world being governed by blind prejudice, 
will not open the eyes of the reader to his own condition, and 
give him resolution to turn his attention to the unmistaken 
laws of God, and think for himself, we may despair of ever 
elevating the soul of man to that noble and independent 
standard, which it has ever claimed, but never attained. 

Amongst Christians, Catholicism is founded upon the in- 
fallibility of the Church, and Protestantism upon the creeds 
of man ; while none base their faith upon the positive and 
eternal truths of God. Let our degraded race reflect upon 
the millions whom Confucius has thought for ; the millions 
whom Zoroaster has thought for ; the millions whom Mahomet 
had thought for ; the millions the Pope has thought for ; and 
then the remaining millions who are under the slavish domin- 
ion of the thousands of distracted petty leaders ; and instead 
of condemning the man who will sacrifice his own popularity 



REASONING. 233 

in defence of his God, and the nobility of his own race, they 
will surely applaud him. This taint of superstition that leads 
to idolatry, and the aping impotence of man, ever has, and I 
fear, ever will suppress the power of reason, and make him the 
dupe of his corrupt and designing fellow mortals. That high- 
sounding and spiritual philosophy, so self-styled, has ordained 
to itself a vast amount of complicated and inexplicable trash, 
called by their ignorant devotees dark and deep learning. 
All this mystic veiling of truth, and the mazes of superstition, 
arise, as before said, from the prejudice of religious writers 
against the vulgarity, as they call it, of sensation, it being a 
thing common to low as well as high life, to the brute as well 
as man, and even to the lower grade of organism. But should 
we, because God has seen proper to give sensation to brutes, 
refuse it, or shut our eyes to the glorious orb of day, because 
he has ordained it to shine alike upon all his creatures down 
to the most humble in creation ? As well might we refuse to 
breathe the vital air, and reject the genial and refreshing 
showers, because they sustain the vegetable kingdom, which 
is still lower in the scale of animated nature. Why the curse 
of God should not have fallen upon those, who profess to be 
his interpreters, for their traitorous dissemblance of truth has 
ever been my marvel. That their doctrines have led man into 
dread confusion, endless strife, and religious bloodshed, is a 
sad and melancholy fact ; and that more than two thousand 
years of labor, and vain display in controversial theology, has 
ended in disrespect, and even contempt, by such truly philo- 
sophic thinkers, as Comte, is too obvious to the reading eye 
for denial. 

But we will return from these sad results to the solid 
argument. Discarding those thingless and distracting names 
as powers and faculties, with their innumerable progeny of 
subordinate and hidden agencies, we will tarn our thoughts in 
upon our sensitive soul, thus cleared of its rubbish, and see what 
is there to be found. Let us ask ourselves what is a thought 



234 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

or idea, if not an impression made upon our feeling mind. We 
cannot think without feeh'ng, nor feel without thinking. They 
being identically one and the same, but in sound. Twice two 
make four, and four ones or three and one will be the same, 
though very different in sound. We cannot think without 
reasoning, and we certainly cannot reason without thinking. 
We cannot judge without reasoning, nor reason without judg- 
ing; reasoning being nothing more in fact than a connected 
train of thoughts. Apply a coal of fire to the surface, and we 
think we feel it, and infer the cause; we believe we feel it, we 
judge we feel it, and reason tells us we feel it, we are conscious 
we feel it, we imagine we feel it, we suppose we feel, we pre- 
sume we feel, we perceive that we feel, we conceive that we 
feel, and in fine we know that we feel. These, now, I will, say 
to the pupil, are nothing but arbitrary associations and lying 
sounds, and not even as much as different modes of sensation 
or thinking, showing the fact, as I have said in many parts of 
this work, how deceptive, bewildering, and vague the language 
used by metaphysical writers is. Such books are not entities 
in nature, nor are the words they contain the representatives 
of real things. But such is the supremacy of habit over the 
human mind, and such, also, the indissoluble tie of association 
of things, that have no real or necessary connection in nature, 
that it is hard to convince the credulous and ordinary thinker, 
but that every word must have its separate ' and appropriate 
meaning, and, therefore, that feeling, reasoning, thinking, etc., 
as they difi'er in words, must be difi'erent in nature. 

Before advancing farther in the argument, I must ask to be 
indulged a little in the clearing away the rubbish and moulds 
that the lapse of ages has accumulated around this important 
subject, that the common reader may, with his untutored and 
natural perceptions, view the naked fact and beautiful symmetry 
of nature its(;lf. We, for instance, are not conscious of the fact, 
that we use a metaphor, when we speak of a long and a short 
time and, also, of a long and a short distance. JS'"ow, in these 



REASONING. 235 

cases, we unconsciously linken both time and space to a line, 
and then measure accordingly, when, in reality, there is no more 
necessary connection or relation than there is between solidity 
and pain. In like manner, we associate color and extension, 
simply because we see them in connection. This association is 
brought about by our measuring time, by motion, and motion 
by extension. For instance, the hand of a clock moves over a 
certain space in one hour, and in two hours it doubles that 
space. 

The despotic of fashion is sustained, in like manner, not 
from any merit in the object itself, or from any real existence 
in nature, but from our accessary and associated ideas. A 
fashion may be formless, and even offensive and forbidding at 
first, but soon, and it becomes tolerable, and by a farther asso- 
ciation with the idea of the great and fashionable, it becomes 
beautiful and irresistible over the taste of the aping and fashion- 
able world. A borrowed and factitious beauty is engrafted 
upon the human mind, the fruit of which there is no archetype 
or stable existence in nature. Things obtain a common rusti- 
city or nobility, according to their intimate associations. A 
costume habitually worn by persons of high rank acquires an 
air of elegance and beauty, when the same form, if associated 
with the idea of low life, would be repugnant to our erratic and 
fastidious taste. Hence the studied and constantly guarded 
effort of snobs to an air of elegance and of exclusive importance. 
Dugald Stewart very justly remarks that the only reason why 
the Scotch language is esteemed as rough, disagreeable, and 
vulgar, is that Edinburgh is a provincial town, and London the 
seat of court. All who are thus warped and swayed by artis- 
tic taste and human conventionalities, I call weak-minded and 
vulgar, for upon such impotent minds have ever been entailed 
the vices of their adored and corrupt models. Thus, by artful 
authority, based upon the same credulity, has our moral judg- 
ment been perverted, and the better feelings of the human heart 
been overwhelmed with a flood of petty and party prejudices. 



236 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Thus, too, upon the same principles of association, has the 
priesthood, by coupling the most unhallowed things with the 
sacred and overawing name of divine, vicegerency been able to 
pin down the galling yoke of vassalage upon the masses. 
Frauds and seductions innumerable have been perpetrated 
under the foul cloak of hypocrisy by the soft whisperings of 
divinity, and the tender ties of sisterhood, and the books of 
heaven are blackened by the records of filchings from the poor 
and oppressed. As may be seen elsewhere, then many mis- 
takes in the name of the Lord, bound up in the Bible, but such 
is their genuine and sacred associations that we do not dare to 
grant our own judgments, and are afraid to separate them, 
though we may not believe in their canonical and inspirational 
infallibility. And thus has time, with its divine associations, 
hallowed some of the grossest and most libellous personalities 
against the great Jehovah himself. 

In farther illustration of the deception of association, we 
often couple the cause and effect as one inseparable idea. For 
instance, we receive the words color, smell, solidity, etc., as the 
ideas themselves, when, in reality, there are only arbitrary 
sounds to express the cause of our inner feelings or ideas, which 
cannot, in the nature of things, be read fragrant, solid or like 
sound. These are mere feelings and exist in the soul alone, 
and bears no exact resemblance to the external thing, to which 
we arbitrarily give a . name for convenience sake. The rusty 
nail bears no resemblance to the lock-jaw which it produces, 
the knife does not look Kke the pain we feel from the wound it 
inflicts, nor does the miasma bear any resemblance to the fevei 
it occasions. The matter of the rose might exhale forever, and 
no such idea or word as fragrance could ever exist, but for the 
existence of the sentient being, upon which the thought is im- 
pressed by such specific particles of matter; in like manner 
might the soul have a separate and eternal existence without 
such sensation, but for tlie actual existence of the rose which 
impresses it. Yinegar does not look sour, nor does sugar smell 



REASONING. 23 1 

or feel sweet, yet they have the power of producing such sensa- 
tions, and yet it is only by experience, and not from that in- 
tuitive, infallible and divine monitor, conscience, that we have 
a priori known it. 

Dr. Gregory, in his preface to his edition of Euclid Works, 
says, that the ancient Greek writers looked upon grave sounds 
as high, and acute sounds as low, and afi&rms that the present 
taste and opinions of sounds is an innovation of recent date. 
These facts show the controlling power of authority and custom 
over the human mind, where things diametrically opposite can 
be beheved from the dictum of some idle thinker and schismatic 
leader. This fact related by Dr. Gregory farther confirms me in 
my opinion that at the present style of music enforced by foreign 
and great names to the destruction both of the soul and body, 
of our good old and feehng ballads, are in like manner innova- 
tions of recent date and contrary to nature, and the harmonious 
and social soul that God has implanted in us. 

The high-tossing and sky-larking variations that fly from 
bar to bar, like a skipper on a griddle, will never reach the 
heart, nor bring a tear to the eye, and can only be admired for 
its difficulty of performance, and its exquisite execution, just as 
the walking of a wire and balancing upon the chin, nose, and 
every finger is. 

In farther illustration of the influence of education and 
habit, every classic reader knows the patriotism and fortitude 
created in the Spartan by education. The savage from early 
education and long habit of anticipation is prepared to bear 
with magnanimity and fortitude the most excruciating torments 
that can be put upon him, so much so, that when his sinews are 
cracking and bursting in the flames, his heroic and immortal 
soul disdains to change a feature or to call on man for mercy. 
In India the wife burns herself upon the funeral pile, while our 
Christian widow, in love with the good things of this world are 
looking out for a younger and better-looking husband. Millions 
crush themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut from false 



238 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

training and the force of religious prejudice, I have no com- 
ments to make upon our boasted patriotism and fortitude in 
Christian martyrdom, nor upon our high sounding self-commen- 
dations, but will simply say, in the language of an old and vulgar 
adage, "that the proof of the pudding is in chewing the bag," 
and again, "that the tree is known by its fruit." — "He, that 
exalteth himself shall be humbled, and not all that cry Lord, 
Lord, are his." 

I earnestly ask the serious attention of the reader to the 
history of man from his cradle to his grave, and there learn the 
force of education and prejudice upon the youthful mind, which 
governs his after-life. In that history he will see that our apish 
aptitude for imitation, and our blind, slavish, and habitual obedi- 
ence to the arbitrary rule of others, has ever been the degreda- 
tion of man, the blight of reason, and the dwarfing of our aspir- 
ing and otherwise progressive souls. 

I here quote what the Rev. Sidney Smith has said under 
the head of Reason and Judgment, in his book on Moral Philo- 
sophy, I literally quote all he has said upon those two subjects, 
not that there is much in it of argument, but that it confirms 
what I have said in regard to the incorrigible obstinacy of early 
education and habit. 

" We connect together two ideas in early life, which we find 
it absolutely impossible to separate in advanced age ; we reason 
from them as from intuitive truths, and upon such topics are 
utterly impregnable to every attempt at conviction. These are 
the principal obstacles to the progress of the reasoning faculty; 
and they are disorders of the mind so common and so detri- 
mental, that I shall speak of them more at large in my next 
and concluding lecture. When they happen not to exist, or 
when they have been guarded against by a good understanding, 
or a superior education, the conclusions we draw upon most sub- 
jects are sound and just; for if a question be discussed coolly, 
if the parties have no other interest in its termination but that 
of truth, if they thoroughly understand the terms they employ, 



REASONING. 239 

if thej are well informed upon the related facts, and if they 
are, both, in the habit of guarding against accidental asso- 
ciations, the conclusions in which they terminate will prob- 
ably be the same. There is hardly any difference of opin- 
ion not resolvable into one or the other of these causes. 
Here, then, we have an outline of that manly and high- 
prized reason, which, under the blessing and direction of God, 
arranges the affairs of this world ; which cools passion, unravels 
sophism, enlightens ignorance, and detects mistake; which wit 
can not disconcert, nor eloquence bear down; which appeals 
always to realities, and ever follows truth without insolence, 
and without fear. For it is disgraceful to the immortal under- 
standing of man to be governed by sounds, and to be the slave 
of that speech which was given to do him service. It is beneath 
the loftiness of his faculties to take his notions of truth from the 
little hamlet in which he was bred, or from the fashions of 
thought which prevail in his hour of life: for truth dwells not 
on the Danube, or the Seine, or the Thames; she is not this 
thing to-day, and to-morrow another; but she is of all places and 
all times the same, in every change, and in every chance— as 
firm as the pillars of the earth, and as beautiful as its fabric. 
Add to the power of discovering truth, the desire of using it 
for the promotion of human happiness, and you have the great 
end and object of our existence. This is the immaculate model 
of excellence that every human being should fix in the chambers 
of his heart; which he should place before his mind's eye from 
the rising to the setting of the sun, — to strengthen his under- 
standing that he may direct his benevolence, and to exhibit to 
the world the most beautiful spectacle the world can behold, of 
consummate virtue guided by consummate talents. ' For some 
men,' says Lord Bacon, ' think that the gratification of curiosity 
is the end of knowledge; some, the love of fame; some, the 
pleasure of dispute; some, the necessity of supporting them- 
selves by their knowledge; but the real use of all knowledge is 



240 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

this — that we should dedicate that reason which was giten us 
by God to the use and advantage of man.' " 

The first lesson given a child, should be to discriminate 
between things natural and necessary in nature, and the for- 
tuitous dogmas of man. They should study well the laws of 
nature which controls the succession of events, both in the 
physical and moral worlds, that we may anticipate the future 
from the past, and thus be able to meet the emergencies of 
life. Medical doctors are like divine doctors,- ever prone to 
magnify inessentials in medicine from mere casual results, 
that the after experience of impartial observers explode. 
Strange, that this kind of association should have so far 
blinded the great M. Boyle, who has given the following 
grave prescription for dysentery. I copy it verbatim from his 
works. "Take the thigh-bone of an hanged man, calcine it 
to a whitheness, and having prepared the patient with an 
antimonial medicine, give him one dram of this white powder 
for one dose, in some good cordial, whether conserve or 
liquor." Some one doubtless took this prescription, and got 
well ; and from the accidental recovery of the patient, and 
from this accidental association of the hanged man's thigh- 
bone with the recovery of the patient, was inferred a neces- 
sary and efBcient connection. This case reminds me of what 
is recorded of a doctor with slender science, who commenced 
the practice of medicine with a single nostrum. His first pa- 
tient was a Dutchman, who got well, and his second patient a 
Frenchman, who died ; from which casual results he recorded, 
in his book of experience, the following facts : — " Be careful 
to recollect, that what will cure a Dutchraan^will kill a French- 
man." The dying of the privy, the flight of crows, signs in 
the heaven, and many other coincidences with war, have been 
taken as causes of war, simply because of their association. 
In this casual connection, augury, astrology, and all the 
forms of prognostication and superstition, have had their 
rise. Advantage has been taken by the designing of this 



REASONING. 241 

trait in the human character, and they have, by grafting these 
superstitious ideas upon weak minds, reapt a bountiful harvest, 
and given to the capricious masses a fanatical devotion to the 
most absurd und corrupt institutions in religion. And right 
here is the danger from our versatile and erratic nature of to- 
tal scepticism; for seeing the deception and depravity of reli- 
gious supremacy, minds equally weak are proud to revolt 
from all authority, human and divine. If we were instructed 
from early life in the immutable and eternal laws of nature, 
upon which alone human harmony and happiness depends, in- 
stead of the riddles, enigmas, and inexplicable mysteries of con- 
troversial theology, we would not be found at this late period 
of the world degraded by a vasallage in superstition and hu- 
man authority. 

Just as rational are the devotees of the Legend of the 
Talmud, and Alkoran, — yes, and to the more recent tricks 
of Brigham Young, as our deluded devotees to the distracted 
dogmas of our day. Such opinions are beneath the dignity 
of an immortal soul, and nothing can redeem us from the venal 
and debasing grasp of human authority, but the sublime 
truths taught in the Book of Nature, which elevates the soul 
and kindly unites the heart of man to man, and to the author 
of his being. Let us then return to her simple and easy les- 
sons in the laws of mind; but first we will copy a few lines 
from a text-book for high colleges. "In order to reason, we 
must have the subject, or that concerning which something is 
either asserted or denied, commanded or enquired; the predic- 
ate, or that which is asserted, denied, commanded or en- 
quired, concerning the subject; the copula, by which the two 
other parts are connected. In these two propositions : Caesar 
was brave, — Men are fallible, — Men and Csesar now are the 
subjects; Fallible and Brave are the predicates; Are and Was 
are the copulas." See Upham's Moral Philosophy, under 
the head of Reasoning, page 192. Again I quote from 
Moreirs History of Modern Philosophy, page 421. In treat- 

11 



242 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ing of what the great Fichte calls the absolute principles of 
philosophy, and which I affirm to be the absolute essence of 
nonsense, he proceeds to say, — " In order, therefore, to ob- 
tain a starting point, for a system of reasoning, and for pure 
science, we must look steadfastly into our own consciousness, 
and find some act of the mind's own spontaneous production, 
which can be regarded in every case as axiomatically true; 
such being found, it would give us the absolute and uncondi- 
tional principle of all human knowledge. This primitive act is 
none other than the principle of identity, — A — A, a principle 
which is unconditionally certain, both as to its matter and its 
form. No one will dispute the proposition — A — A, when it 
is not enunciated as though A implied any particular existence, 
but simply hypothetically ; — that if A is, then A is equal to 
A ; and yet, in affirming A — A, I pass a judgment; I think, 
and in doing so, I affirm myself, so that the identity of me is 
here asserted, and the proposition becomes Ego = Ego. The 
second absolute principle is the category of negation, which 
may be thus expressed : A is not = A. This proposition is 
conditional as to matter, because it depends upon the previous 
truth A = A, but it is unconditional as to the form. Viewed 
as an absolute act of the mind, the equation becomes the not- 
me if not = the me. By the former proposition the me affirmed 
itself ; by this second act, the me affirms the not-me, that is, 
it places something before it which is opposed to self. Iq 
other words, in the one case the mind views itself as the abso- 
lute subject ; now it views itself as object ; forming thus the 
opposition which is necessary to every act of conscienciousness." 
I have quoted the above few lines not by way of burlesque, 
but to give the common reader a fair specimen of the teachings 
of Mental Philosophy, and thus to enable him to infer how it 
is that more than two thousand years of labor in that science 
has only served to obscure it, and enlarge the distraction of 
authors upon the subject, and that 1858 years of theological 
learning, and search for religious truth, should have ended as 



REASONING. 243 

did the Tower of Babel, and that Brigham Young should at 
this late day be found to be the greatest Divine on earth, for 
the only way we have to judge of the greatness of a cause is its 
success or result, or in other words, from its effects. 

I have said that the human soul is a unit, a simple, indivis- 
ible and feeling entity, capable not of divisions, but only of 
modes of action, corresponding with the objects that act upon 
it, as changes the wax to the impression of the seal, or the 
paper to the characters written upon it. Judging, reasoning, 
remembering, and imagining, are all but modes of conscient ac- 
tion or thinking, and in sound excepted, there is no difference 
in all this parade of names, for in every case it is simple feeling 
or thinking which is the same, for we cannot feel without 
thinking, nor think without feeling. We must here scrutinize 
closely, and consider words worth nothing, for we can think 
and act correctly without words, as do brutes, children, and 
deaf people. Even the sucking infant, knowing nothing of the 
sign or force of words that so frequently mislead adult, can tell 
the mother from any other person, and even distinguish between 
a smile and a frown. There has been much dispute between 
worldly authors in regard to nominalism, and "realism," and 
whether we can reason without the use of language. If children 
and mutes did not decide that question, my old roan horse 
would, for whenever I ride him through country gates, he 
pushes his nose through the slats, and lifts the latch, and by 
shoving hard with his head, carries the heaviest gate before him. 
If the staves be too close for his nose, he is so reasonable in 
thought, that he at once thrust his tongue through, and lifts 
the latch. He has also learned, J)y observation, to lay down 
bars as quickly with his teeth, as many man can with his 
hands. This reasoning, and reasoning promptly without lan- 
guage, may be said to be instinct, which is not true, for it is 
purely the result of observation and experience, no young horse 
ever at first attempting such a thing. Every farmer knows 
that young horses are like young people, and that they gain in 



244: MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

knowledge by education and training, just as the human does. 
Their decisions are prompt and correct, like that of Patrick 
Henry's, without the parade of logical forms. They, like quick, 
witted and sensible people, look right into the facts in nature, 
and have no use for the pedantic sounds of categories, predicates, 
copulas and sequences. Much has also been said about the 
wonderful and distinguishing trait of personal identity, as a 
proof of the spirituality and immortality of the soul. I would 
ask such scribblers and book-makers, whether a cat or dog, 
prone to fight like our bipeds, and to whom they deny a mind or a 
soul, ever doubted of the me or the not me, or ever mistook 
themselves for another. There is no way but by short hand 
and stubborn facts to meet such vague and absurd abstractions. 
The simple science of mind that should occupy but a few pages, 
has been torn into atoms and scattered through thousands of 
great volumes under the imposing title of mental science. Such 
pedagogues have been called deep learned and great men, 
when in the eyes of nature's true science they are meagre, pet- 
ty, and stale drivellers. 

Our metaphysical books are full of technicalities that in real- 
ity have no meaning, and consequently only encumber the sub- 
ject and distract the pupil, who is always looking for their ap- 
plication, and not finding it, despairs of understanding the sub- 
ject which, without such language, would be perfectly simple 
and easy. But thus it is that those petty pedagogues, by the 
dexterous use of senseless sounds, and harmonious nothings, 
get the name of wise-acres, and fatten upon the credulity of 
their demented and enslaved fellow-mortals. Yet these books 
being established in our schools from long authority, have un- 
fortunately misled the pupil by inducing him to believe that 
such divisions in terms as powers, faculties, etc., must mean 
and represent some rejd difference, and division of the mind 
itself. There is proof ample of all that can be asked for mind 
without resorting to such impotent and unmanly subterfuge. 
A man's belief is nothing aside from his thoughts, for, as 



REASONING. 245 

before stated, we believe, we think, we imagine, we presume, feel, 
and are conscious, and know, that it is midday and not midnight. 
These are mere solecisms or repetitions of sounds, to express a 
simple feeling of soul. The light, flashing upon the mind, at 
once makes its unavoidable impression, as the seal upon the wax, 
the pictm-e upon the daguerreotype plate, the writing upon 
paper, or the object thrown by light upon the face of the mir- 
ror. There is a oneness of mind and a oneness of action, and 
the multiplicity of words are but contraventions of the fact. 
Reasoning is said to be the drawing conclusions from the com- 
parison of two or more ideas, as though many ideas or actions 
of the mind could exist in the same space at the same time; 
when the *' sensorium commune " can act but one act at a time, 
how can we, with the existing state of mind, compare two 
other states of mind that do not exist. This would be the same 
as a thing acting when it is not, and where it is not. Compar- 
ing must be an act of that which thinks, or compares, so that 
to compare two or more ideas would be to admit that an action 
of comparing, and that two or more ideas compared must occupy 
the same space at the same time, a thing admitted by all philo- 
sophic writers to be impossible, they having lain it down as an 
axiom that no two things can occupy the same space at the 
same time. It is impossible that the same mind can be in two 
or more different states at the same time. Comparing is think- 
ing, so if we compare two other thoughts, three thoughts must 
exist in the same mind at the same time. There is no such 
thing, therefore, as complex thoughts so elaborately treated of 
by authors, each thought being perfectly simple, but succeeding 
each other in such rapid succession as that they all seem to 
be present at the same time. If we whirl a fire-brand rapidly 
around in the dark, it bears the appearance of one continuous, 
unbroken and luminous ring, when in reality the fire-brand is 
not in but one place at a time, one impression not dying till 
another is presented, thus forming a continuous unbroken chain, 
though each link of that chain is different in time, in space, and 



246 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRATE. 

in nature, when moving. Kor is there such a thing as simul- 
taneity in the chain of causaUtj, but all is succession. We may 
imagine an endless chain so united and dependent, that when 
the first link is moved, every link is in motion, yet it will readily 
be seen, that though the whole chain moves through space, no 
two links occupy the same space at the same time. It is com- 
mon to speak of " synchronical," actions in physiological pheno- 
mena, but there is no such thing in the same organ. There are 
" peristaltic " or " vermicular " motions in rapid succession, and 
there is the intimate connection or tie of cause and effect, yet 
the cause must preceed the effect in nature, as well as in time 
and space. It is common also to speak of simultaneous and 
synchronous actions of the mind, but there is certainly no such 
thing. All are successive modes of action, in quick succession, 
like the turning of the kaleidoscope. Nor is there any more 
mystery in this, than that one body, as a ball in motion, should 
put a large number in successive motion. One idea will often 
stir up a whole concatenation of ideas. How this is done 
seems to be an ultimate fact, for which I have no satisfactory 
explanation. 

This I know, however, that these associations are not stored 
away in cells, nor shut up in caves like the winds by JEolus, to 
be let out at pleasure, as some authors have taught, who speak 
of large stores of ideas, and shelves upon which select ideas can 
be placed for ready purposes, as merchants store away their 
goods. Speak one word, and it often happens, that ruminating 
thoughts crowd upon us for hours, simply by suggestion or asso- 
ciation, pretty much in the order and connection in which they 
have been received. 

" Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain 
Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain, 
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise, 
Each stamps its image as the other flies." 

It is just as difficult to~ account for how it is that intermittent 
fevers and other diseases lie dormant in the system, and are 



REASONING. 24 1 

stirred up by trifling causes, of which we are not conscious, or 
how small-pox or vaccination should remain unknown, and un- 
felt for life, to the exclusion of certain other diseases. There is 
another fact in the animal economy but little noticed, and which 
bears a close analogy to the phenomena of mind, that no two 
systemic or generic diseases can exist in the same system, at the 
same time, one counteracting the other, which will lie dormant 
till the first subsides, and then rise up and run its course. To 
the just opprobrium of medical science, and to the neglect of 
mental alienation and suffering humanity, the dependent rela- 
tion of mind and body has been almost wholly neglected. A 
close attention to our nervous influences would mitigate many a 
sorrow and prolong the period of life. 

I have said there are no such things as complex ideas, every 
idea being in itself plain and distinct. Color and extension, as 
I before observed, have no necessary connection, and may be 
separated, yet we invariably receive them as one simple idea. 
Each part of every letter in the alphabet, when we first begin 
to learn, is closely scrutinized, the single letter A having many 
parts which are examined by the young beginner to distinguish 
it from B, but by and by A with all its parts, first separate and 
distinct, now coalesce and become one simple idea. Time brings 
not only entire letters but whole words and sentences, as equally 
simple as a single side of A. The word man, for instance, is 
perfectly simple and expressive, without going back, and by 
analysis making a whole volume of metaphysical learning in 
giving every part of every letter in M-A-N, and then that he 
is a biped with many thousand peculiarities and relations of 
mind and body in the great scale of organisms. If we look at 
a table with two legs, it is simple, and one with four legs, though 
more complicated, is equally so, as an idea being neither black, 
blue, red, or green, nor are they solid, extended, rough, smooth, 
angular, or circular, but a mere simple feeling. 

If thinking and believing be not the same, then we can not 
think and believe at the same time. I should like that those 



248 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

lavish writers would tell me where the feeling parts, the think- 
ing parts, the conscious parts, the willing parts, the judging 
parts, and the reasoning parts of the mind are situated, and by 
what kind of substance they are united. Nothing can more palp- 
ably show the absurdity of dividing the mind into parts, than to 
think where those parts are placed, and how such parts can exist 
separate from the mind. Not more than one desire can exist in 
the same mind at the same time, and the stronger one will always 
prevail with as much certainty, as the heavy weight will cast the 
scale. Mental desires and muscular contractions are as indis- 
solubly united as cause and effect, so much so that the deed al- 
ways follows the desire. There is no choice neuter, these terms 
being incompatible, but every choice is absolute ; yet the differ- 
ence may be so indifferent or trifling, that we are not conscious 
why we did as we did, and hence are apt, if not satisfied, to re- 
proach ourselves, and say that we might so easily have acted 
otherwise. One sentence, however, will show that these re- 
reproachful expressions are thoughtless and silly, for the whole 
pursuit of man from his cradle to his grave being happiness, 
he could not knowingly make himself unhappy, as he now is 
with these after-lights shining in upon his soul, so that were it 
possible for him to go back, he would as certainly under the 
same circumstances do the same thing, as that the same causes 
will under the same circumstances always produce the same 
effects. We are equally deceived by our feelings in other 
things ; for instance : when a man says he thinks he will 
think, he is already thinking, and when he says he can will a 
thought, he expresses a direct contradiction ; for how can he 
will a thought wi^thout knowing what thought to will, and if 
he knows what thought to will, it requires no will, for the 
thought is already present to the mind. I see those grievous 
and vexatious errors as plainly as that two and two make 
four, yet I know how hard it is to convince the obstinate and 
prejudiced, who are born to the grossest errors by an invincible 
early education. The only cure is to attach our youths to the 



REASONING. 249 

charms of simple and unpretending nature, our immutable friend 
and infallible teacher of wisdom. She has so constructed man 
with sensibilities and perfections that it requires no philosophy 
or books on ethics to tell him that he does not wish to be rob- 
bed of his liberty, or to be injured in his person or property, 
and knowing that his fellows have the same feelings and de- 
sires in common with himself, a sense of disapprobation arises 
whenever he inflicts an injury upon his fellow-man, and here 
lies the whole secret so controverted by authors, of how we 
come by a sense of right and wrong, and of moral obligation. 
Thus we see how plain and simple these things of reason are, 
requiring no logical forms to be memorised before we can rea- 
son or understand our own rights, or be conscious of these 
feelings of moral obligation that God has implanted in us, not 
by direct and daily inspiration, but in our original organiza- 
tion. These arbitrary subtleties, dead languages, and such 
other hke trifles may be studied for seven years in college as 
the " insignia" of learning, that may give us cast with the art- 
istic and pedantic world, but they can never make us wise or 
meet the emergencies of practical life. They dwarf the mind 
to insignificance, and are contemptible in the sight of God, who 
delights in things as things are made, and not as man by his 
traiterous and artful vanity would have them. To grant this 
is but to read the history of facts, and see that more than two 
thousand years of mental and religious studies have only served 
to create a Maelstroom of the mental world, into which the 
ten thousand distracted parties are drawn, and are tearing 
each other's dogmas to pieces. 

We see a marked imbecility in the minds of many of those 
learned men, so falsely called, whose brains have been choked 
up with dead languages, party creeds, and dogmas, and in 
some instances they are so perfectly born down to dementation, 
as by the engorgement of blood in case of apoplexy. Look at 
Bishop Berkeley, for instance, whose elysian reveries and trans- 
cendental feelings involved him so deeply in the mazes of spi- 



250 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ritualism and superstition, that he denied the existence of mat- 
ter and of the objective world. Swedenborg and thousands of 
other leaders might be cited as lamentable examples of this 
dilemma. Those, who have read the world's history to any 
purpose, cannot forget that thousands, yes, millions have 
starved and whipt themselves to death, voluntarily burnt 
and crushed themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut for 
the want of a correct knowledge of mental science, and of the 
plain and simple laws of God, that operate daily and hourly 
upon us for woe or for weal. The credulity of man has ever 
led him off from these immutable and eternal laws to the 
ever vacillating and ephemeral opinions of his erring and de- 
signing fellow-mortals. I have been constantly led off by giv- 
ing practical examples of the results of the world's opinions 
which, I presume, will not be received amiss ; for in all cases 
of dispute about the value of a tree, I think it better to decide 
the question by exhibiting the fruit, than to write learned 
books of mysticism and doubt. But we will again resume 
the argument. It must be seen that even the brute, guided by 
nature, reasons with more energy and quickness of decision than 
man in all things appertaining to his self-preservation and hap- 
piness in life, and had he the power of speech, hands to feel, 
or the sense of touch, the only corrective of our senses, and 
our greatest source of knowledge, the horse for instance, with 
a century to live like ourselves, would, if not stupified, as we 
are by a load of useless things, would with the mind he now 
possesses, with those additional advantages, be equal to man. 
And horses, though they are not poets or romance writers, cer- 
tainly have vivid and exhuberant imaginations, equal to the 
great Kant who has made a book of legendary philosophy out 
of nothing, for they can transform an old stump greatly to the 
hazard of the rider, into gorgeous and moving ghosts.- Brutes 
also have phantom dreams, for they often wake up affrighted, 
and the dog is frequently heard to bark in his sleep, while his 
legs are going as in full chase of his game. Tupper says, 



REASONING. 251 

" What hath, the noble dog less than reason, 
Or the brute man more than instinct." 

If learning in things we do not understand constitutes a 
great man, then the learned or college pig had as great a mind 
as Bishop Berkeley, for he was so artistically accompUshed in 
cards, as doubtless to beat the philosopher in that game. There 
are many bipeds so technically trained in the conventionalities 
of man, as to enjoy the appellation of great and learned, who 
in the eyes of merit and true science, have no more claim to 
useful qualification than the parrot or jack-daw. 

I am here again reminded that my great aversion to the 
stale and mechanical trainings of man in useless things, and my 
steady fondness for the simple and vital principles of nature is 
leading me somewhat astray from the heading of this article, 
but I must be indulged a little farther in illustrations and ex- 
amples, when I will return to the strict argument. I now wish 
to show the reader from the undeniable condition of mankind 
how far the rule of reasoning has led him into the paths of 
truth for centuries past. The countless millions of money that 
has been expended, and the innumerable brains which have 
been addled in our mechanical superstitions and fanatical insti- 
tutions, have placed us in the following degraded, and insecure 
condition. The world is filled with political and religious 
rogues, whose hypocritical pomp and abominable tyranny are 
worshipped by the masses, whose pockets they pick and then 
send them to hell for the want of money to pray them out. 
The conflicting and violent opinions have estranged man from 
man, and led to the most heart-rending and sanguinary scenes, 
upon which kind nature has looked with feehngs of pity and 
anxious solicitude for the better fate of man. Ruin and deso- 
lation has grown out of the religious and political tenets of our 
institutions. Politics has become a trade of gross subterfuge 
and debasing tricks, while rehgion has degenerated into vague 
and idle ceremonies, and our consciences are ruled by the dog- 
mas of party. Wars are yet rife in the world, and instead of 



252 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

humaa sacrifices and burning for witchcraft, which the laws 
forbid, our churches are profaned by obscene garrulity, and the 
ribaldry of party. That calm and serene dignity, and deep and 
solemn devotion at the sacred desk is no longer seen and heard, 
nor can that humility, meekness, and tender piety, belonging to 
a pure and simple-hearted religion, be found. Virtue and hon- 
esty, with an unalloyed and conscientious solicitude for the wel- 
fare of our fellows, has not been taught, but extravagance has 
engendered a lurking envy, while each one's wits is sharpened 
by his education to overreach and swindle his brother. The 
pomp, parade, and ambition of the world, and the pride of 
modern church paraphernalia draws so hard upon the professor's 
purse, that he cannot, while holding with the fashions of the 
day, be strictly honest. I mention these melancholy and por- 
tentous facts that the reader may excuse me in my bold but 
conscientious condemnation of the abuses of society, and in my 
efforts to estabhsh a new system of education, that of the study 
of the immutable and eternal laws of nature, instead of the dis- 
tracted and corrupting party dogmas of man. My plan for 
throwing off dead languages, logic, rhetoric, and many other 
worthless branches of study, with all sectarian teaching, and 
attaching the pupil early to the investigation of the pure science 
of nature (laws of God) I have laid down elsewhere, and only 
mention it here in its legitimate connection with the subject of 
reason, and the history of man from his cradle to his grave. 

I shall not treat of judgment, memory, and imagination 
separately, as I consider them all but different modes of action, 
in the same identical thing, and consequently of no separate 
importance in explaining the nature of mind. Though I have 
justly ridiculed the vanity of authors in their vocabulary of 
independent and separate powers and faculties, I have no ob- 
jection how many may be added by way of diversifying and 
embellishing our language, so that an explanation accompanies 
them, telling the pupil that they do not mean what they say. 
It is more convenient to say that the sun rises and sets, than 



REASONING. 253 

to say, that the earth's diarnal motion gives it that appearance, 
yet this should be explained to the tyro in science, who is liable 
to be misled by such terms. Mental writers are like phreno- 
logical scribblers, every author anxious to swell his book with 
new discoveries, till there are now as many bumps upon our 
little heads, as there are protuberances upon the surface of 
the great globe. Metaphysicians, in like manner, have swelled 
the mind, an immaterial and unextended thing, with faculties, 
powers, and ideas corresponding with every created thing, till 
the mind is checkered with more than can be found upon the 
entire map of this terrestrial sphere. From which we might 
wonder, as did Goldsmith's villagers, how so little a head should 
hold so much. 

I have said that thinking, reasoning, judging, imagining, 
remembering, feeling, knowing, and being conscious of a thing 
are all the same, or mere modes of action in the same feeling 
and identical soul. For instance, apply fire or ice to the sur- 
face, prick it with a pin, or cut it with a knife, all these sensa- 
tions will be different, and we may view a thousand objects, 
smell a thousand smells, and hear as many sounds, but it would 
encumber the science of mind, to call them faculties and 
powers, and force the pupil to memorise them, yet if some 
great author (great fool) should classify every idea, passion, 
and emotion of soul, thousands of, which we have by the hour, 
they would, by long custom and the stupidity of teachers, seem 
reasonable and necessary. I am, for instance, but one man, 
and were my name altered, or many titles given me, I would 
be the same, and though I may act many actions, still I am 
the same identical man. The mind is like a pool of water, that 
may have innumerable ripples (feelings or passions) rising, sub- 
siding, and succeeding each other in endless succession, yet the 
subject of all this excitement, even when lashed to a foaming 
fury, is the same placid pool. The wax may be pressed with 
endless shapes, and have stamps of every character imprinted 
upon it, yet it is the same identical wax. Sensation, as I have 



254 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

said, is the mind which is susceptible of this feeling, that, and 
the other, ad infinitum. That past feelings or ideas should be 
called up by external or internal excitations, as in memory or 
imagination, is not'more wonderful than that intermittent fevers 
should subside or pass off, and return at will without any cause, 
as free-willers would say. The cow ruminates as we do, and 
like us, gets nothing back but what was objectively taken in. 
She, then, no more gets her cud directly from heaven, from 
ministering and the promptings of angels, nor from sacred in- 
tuition, than we do our ideas from the same sources. The prin- 
ciple of association, suggestion or memory, by which our 
thoughts recur, is not understood, but this is well known and 
granted by all, that the brute has it in a higher degree than 
man, as the horse, for instance, never forgets his early associa- 
tions. 

Between will or desire and muscular motion or contraction, 
there is an indissoluble tie, the deed, when the telegraphic 
wires are up, always obeing the desire to act. I will to raise 
my arm, and it is done, or to walk, and the legs are put in 
motion. Indeed, such is the estabhshed order of mentality, 
that I now constantly find myself writing letters improperly. 
Being, by no means, perfect in orthography, and absent-minded 
withal, I often think how such and such words are to be spelled, 
and if I think of a letter by association or similarity of sound, 
ahead of its proper connection, my fingers so quickly and un- 
consciously obey the will,, that the letter or word is written 
before I have time to reflect and countermand it. Thus my 
page is blotted and interlined greatly to my annoyance. With 
my dictating discipline, which is slow, I am satisfied, but with 
my writing machine I am not. It's inditing my suggestions 
too hastily. From this same obedience of our locomotive 
muscles to the will, proceeds, no doubt, the fact that by giving 
one command to the legs to walk to a certain place, they move 
on, while the commander may meditate or converse, and they 
are sure to faithfully keep on, even if we pass the place, till 



REASONING. 255 

there is a counter-command given to stop, go right, go left, or 
turn in, as the case may be. The cry, move, to a well-trained 
horse, will suddenly check the movement of every muscle in his 
powerful body, though in full and rapid motion, when the word 
"go!" will again start them. The will in some cases influences 
even the involuntary muscles, as in our alvine and urinary 
evacuations, which are involuntary at first as in the infant, 
who pride of decency by age obtains control over them. The 
passions and emotions, too, have their influence over the 
muscles. To look upon a woman with lust, the amative muscle 
is at once erected, and it is well known that fear, anxiety, and 
suspense will act powerfully upon the bowels and kidneys, and 
in thousand of cases has produced death by cholera. These are 
physiological laws of the animal economy of greatest patholo- 
gical and therapeutic importance. There is a marked difference 
in the organization of men that gives them a control over a 
regular and systematic train of thought. There are men of 
quick perception, brilliant genius, and prompt action, with an 
obvious deficiency in their systematic association. Montaigne, 
though a man of noted talents, was so deficient in memory that 
he never could recollect the name of a single one of his own 
domestics, but had to call them by their vocation. Cromwell, 
as Hume says, was never surpassed in a correct and ready 
judgment, and yet his arguments were " dark, tedious, and un- 
satisfactory." It is related that Lord Mansfield had a friend 
who was appointed to the judges bench, and upon his doubting 
of his own ability to fill the station, as he could not argue a 
case, Mansfield assured him that a sound judgment was not so 
difficult as he supposed, and that, if he would always leave it 
to his good natural sense, his judgment would be right, but to 
be careful never to offer a reason for it, as that would most 
certainly be wrong, or, in other words, vague and unsatis- 
factory. Such differences of mind are all around us, nor are 
they more remarkable than the varieties of person, and the 



256 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

colors of eyes and hair, and I only cite the above as prominent 
and striking cases. 

As I consider the various subjects of mind under which I 
write as arbitrary and unscientific, I have not confined myself 
strictly to the caption, but followed the natural freedom of my own 
thoughts, which leads me to indulge in a few more remarks, that 
at this moment recurs to mind, but which more strictly should 
be found under the head of Volition. There is nothing more 
false than the common idea and consequent remark, that we can 
and should control our thoughts, when the fact is exactly the 
reverse, our thoughts invariably controlling us. Of this startling 
fact every man will be convinced by observing how he comes by 
his thoughts, and how his actions are controlled by those thoughts. 
A judge decides according to his opinion or thoughts, and a 
jury does the same. Look at the noon-day sun, and can you 
avoid thinking it mid-day and not mid-night. You cannot avoid 
seeing every thing you see, feeling every thing you feel, and 
hearing every thing you hear, nor can you any more avoid every 
thought that occurs within you, than you can the stroke of 
death when it comes upon you. Why, when sleepless, and your 
thoughts wandering to the end of the earth, do you not con- 
trol them and put them to rest. This you would say is foolish 
talk, but certainly not more so than in every other case, where 
we speak of controlling our thoughts. Every opinion, too, has 
its unavoidable cause, as, for instance, a man presents himself 
before us, and at once we think it is a man, and so with every 
opinion given by every sense we have; and the talk then about 
controlling our feelings or opinions must certainly be without 
due reflection, and the burning of each other, because we can 
not do it, is horrible beyond the power of language to express. 
Again there can be no act of will without a choice, and as a 
choice denotes a thing chosen, it will readily be seen that that 
thing chosen must have been the cause of that choice. And 
then again, if we can choose to do a thing without a cause, we 



REASONING. 25T 

must have events or effects without a cause, and if not, man 
can not be free to think as he pleases without a cause to make 
him do so. See my article on Volition. 

If we have two thoughts in immediate succession, we cannot 
but be sensible of the difference without throwing them up side 
by side, as authors express it, where there is no room or place 
to be thrown; turning them about, and comparing them, which 
acts of comparing would all be in and by the unextended and 
thinking thing, that compares, making the mind compare itself 
with itself, acts many acts, and be in many conditions at the 
same time, making no allotment either for time or for space, in 
the various acts of the censorium. This is contrary both to 
science and to common sense, for every thing in existence re- 
quires both time and space for its existence, in addition to which 
every effect requires its proper and sufficient cause, whereas we 
here have a diversity from identity, and many effects from one 
cause, and others without any cause. When the science of mind 
shall be understood, it will be seen that it cannot be in two 
states at the same time, nor can it be occupied by two or more 
ideas at the same identical moment, which facts renders the idea 
of entertaining and of comparing a number of ideas together at 
the same time ridiculously absurd. Thus, then, it must appear 
that every idea or perception of the mind is simply the effect or 
result of the thing perceived at the moment of perception, and 
neither the archetype phantasm, nor the representation of any 
thing existing in the mind from all eternity, as is by the great 
duncery works and text-books, particularly of Germany, taught. 
It would be just as sensible to say that the child existed in the 
womb of the maid, millions of years before her own birth, as to 
say that every idea we have, existed either in the mind of Deity 
or man, millions of years before the existence of man, and yet, 
strange to tell, those mystic and transcendental Spirituahsts 
teach the doctrine. I have predicted, I think, in other parts of 
this work, that Spiritualism, now fast calling to its aid the 
greatest men of our nation, and Swedeuborgianism, will, by 



258 



MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 



their strong and natural affinity coalesce, so that what the 
magic arm of Brigham Young does not grasp, will in the next 
half century be found within the pale of this most fascinating 
doctrine of Spiritualism, which captivates and translates the 
soul beyond any scheme of religion yet ever gotten up by man. 
It at once arrests the soul and translates it to the ethereal re- 
gions, where it in rapturous transports of joy revels amidst the 
departed spirits of its once earthly joys. In corroboration of my 
predictions I here give a short quotation from iV", O. Commer- 
cial Bulletin: 

" SwEDENBORGiANisM. — We Icam that there has been within 
a few months past quite a stampede in the German Methodist 
Churches of New Orleans and vicinity, toward Swedenborgian- 
ism. One of the most popular of the German preachers, the 
Rev. J. M. Hofer, has gone over to the mystic faith of the 
great Swedish philosopher, and taken with him not a few of 
his brethren and friends, and now holds forth to them at private 
houses on the Sabbath. Metaphysical speculations appear to have 
an indescribable charm for the German mind, and if they have 
about them an air of the mystical and marvellous, the attrac- 
tions seem to be increased." 

This I throw up simply as a feather, amidst thousands of 
others afloat, to show which way the wind blows, from which 
every man of reflection who has read the various religions of 
the world, and has seen the wonderful workings of the human 
mind, will grant with myself, that mysticism is more fascinat- 
ing to the ii^dolent minds of the masses, than a laborious and 
systematic rationalism. 

It is against this wild fanaticism as well as all other abuses 
in religion I write, and am willing to devote my time and 
feeble efforts to the establishment of a rational standart of re- 
ligion, and true devotion to the great author and kind father 
of our being. But in returning from consequences to the argu- 
ment, I affirm that there is no such thing as innate or divine 
ideas or knowledge of any kind, but what is received through 



REASONING. 259 

the senses after birth, and so far as those ideas are subsequent- 
ly changed and ruminated through the mind, that it is either 
by the association with sounds, sights, and external objects, or 
from the stirring up of our nervous influences by our internal 
and vital functions. A strong cup of tea, for instance, acting 
upon the nerves of the stomach, will give us a sleepless night, 
and revolve ten thousand thoughts through the mind that 
otherwise would never have been brought up, or recalled to 
mind. I have said the mind cannot be in two or more different 
states at the same time, and consequently that there is no com- 
paring of ideas in reasoning, as is taught by the text-books, for 
comparing as they say, is bringing and setting up two or more 
ideas side by side in order to perceive the difference, which, of 
course, will make many things occupy the same space at the 
same time, throw the mind into various conditions at the 
same moment, and make it act many acts at the same time, as 
calling up many ideas at the same time, setting them up side 
by side, and in comparing and inferring their difference. Let 
us seriously reflect and ask ourselves what an idea is ; whether 
it be a something independent, and separate from the mind, 
or a mere feeling, sensation, or action, mode or condition of 
mind ; if the former ideas then can exist without the mind, and 
if the latter, the mind, not being able to act but one act at the 
same time, or to be in opposite conditions at the same moment, 
it renders the alternative as impossible, as for two things to 
occupy the same space at the same time. From this exhibition 
of facts it must now appear that there is no such thing as 
placing a number of ideas side by side, requiring the mind to 
be in various conditions at the same time, in comparing, infer- 
ring, etc , which authors say constitutes the reasoning process, 
or this independent and wonderful faculty or power called rea- 
son. It is not in reasoning alone that those separate, indepen- 
dent and eternal ideas has figured, but in all the lamentable 
divisions and bloody struggles in religion, they have had much 



260 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

to do, each fanatic holding his own ideas to be divinely inspired, 
and those of his adversary to be instigated by the devil, and 
consequently to be fought by fire and sword. I again and 
again affirm that the mind is dependent for every idea, impres- 
sion, or conception with which it becomes pregnant, to the 
physical and appointed causes of impregnation, and that the 
soul or precipient principle simply becomes sensible, or in other 
words, conscious of these impressions, and that this is the sum 
total of physiological phenomena, or process of mentality. If 
a cow and a horse be presented to the mind either jointly or 
separately, they being different in nature, the mind is at once 
impressed with the fact. The fire of a cannon and that of a 
rifle sounds so differently that it matters not what interval 
there may be in time, they tell the mind the difference in 
sound, without being called up before the mind's presence 
chamber, and there handled, turned about, and compared. To 
know the difference in weight between two bodies, as of lead 
and cork, it is but to take them in the hand ; and to know the 
difference in taste between vinegar and sugar, is simply to take 
them in the mouth, and the taste is told without pedantic tech- 
nicalities and abstract subtleties. Let a man present himself 
with all his varied features, and the idea produced is just as 
simple, as if cast upon the daguerreotype plate or the face of 
a mirror, and requires no analysis or comparisons to know it 
from all other faces without going back through all eternity to 
find the archetype or phantasm in the mind of deity, millions of 
years before man was created. • 

Thus it must be seen by every reader, having independence 
to think, and capacity for the most obvious laws of nature, 
that the laws of mind so far are perfectly plain and simple, and 
beyond this ultimate point we shall never get ; God having said, 
thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. Newton pursues the 
laws of gravitation in its simple but wonderful powers, even to 
its grasp upon the innumerable worlds that roll through inter- 



REASONING. 261 

minable space, and yet when asked what gravitation was, he 
answered, not in vanity, but as a wise and honest man, he 
knew no more than the ploughman of the fields. The question 
of soul is as ultimate as that of God himself, and we can know 
no more of its essence, than we can of the essence and indivi- 
duality of God. We know God onfy by his works, and we 
have no other knowledge of mind, but by its acts. A moment's 
reflection will convince us that the mind can no more operate 
upon itself, compare itself with itself, move itself or create ideas 
within itself, than the mirror can produce pictures upon itself, 
or a stone operate on and move itself, all created things short 
of God being as certainly dualistic and dependent as that there 
is a God. Whenever we transcend the limits of our allotted 
knowledge, and attempt to reach the infinite by the finite, we 
at once launch into the regions of interminable mysticism, 
where metaphysical writers have fled and floundered for ages 
past. Physical philosophers who ascend step by step through 
the unmistaken laws of nature, labor within their legitimate 
sphere, and are to be respected for sustaining the mandates of 
heaven, and for the great good they may do mankind ; but me- 
taphysical philosophers and controversial Divines, who mystify 
the purely simple mind of man by giving it innumerable 
powers, faculties and phantasms, eternal ideas and spiritual 
agencies, and who profess to penetrate the impenetrable veil of 
deity, and reveal to man the will of God plainer than he can 
do, or has done, are truly a contemptible set of impostors, and 
unworthy the confidence of any sensible or good man. 

Judging, reasoning, or supposing a proposition to be true 
or false, is nothing more than an unavoidable result, or con- 
clusion, from the succession of thoughts, brought up to the 
mind by the terms of the proposition itself, with its attending 
circumstances and reasoning, if we can make any distinction, is 
simply repeating the order and connection of these thoughts to 
convince others. A thought, sensation, or idea is not an entity 

8* 



262 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

or separate something from the mind, as some have supposed, 
but a mere censoreal tendency, or a particular mode of the 
mind's acting, and these various modes, sensations, thoughts, or 
conditions of mind are as numerous as the objects in nature, that 
excite them for the moment, and then they are gone for ever, 
except brought up by some external resemblance, or by what I 
call the sixth sense, the functional and internal excitations. 



I 



I 



COx\SClENCE. 



Conscience is said to be that faculty of the mind which 
distinguishes between right and wrong, and that chooses or re- 
fuses in all our moral acts. It is generally supposed to be an 
original, distinct, and independent power by which we are gov- 
erned in all our opinions throughout life. It is taught that 
this conscience is in reality the only spark of divinity we have 
within us, and that it should be implicitly obeyed as an infal- 
lible monitor. This doctrine, though maintained by the best of 
men, and for the best of purposes, is in reality the doctrine of 
Satan, who has ever persuaded man that he has a divinity that 
stirs within him, and points out to him the errors of others 
against whom he is conscienciously bound to use his best exer- 
tions, and even to fight with fire and fagot where dictations and 
creeds will not succeed. Every man on earth is said to possess 
this unerring divinity and yet, what is truly marvellous, every 
one is commanded on the pain of death, to yield his divinity as 
false to that of others. This paradoxical and wonderful thing, 
conscience, which claims to be what God himself, cannot be^ 
inherent and fortuitous — mutable and immutable — just and un- 
just — true and false ; became, under the terrible test of con- 
science, the cruel persecutor of the Christian Church, under 
which thousands, yes, millions, if we trace back the annals of 
man, of the most pious men on earth, have bled and died. 
Leaving the Christian world for the great arena of common 
life, we find this divine conscience deceiving men and engaged 
in the most malicious and cruel strifes. The man of observa- 
tion needs no subtle philosophy to convince him of the absurdity 
of this mischievous doctrine, so pertinaciously held by Divines. 



264 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

He has but to look at the little commerce around him and see 
the disputes, suits, and hard thoughts amongst the best and 
most conciencious of his neighbors. 

I will not waste time in treating this dangerous and ridicul- 
ous doctrine technically and abstractly, but with the hand of 
truth and justice I will tear from its foul and jBendish back its 
dark and bloody cloak, and expose it to the light of heaven, 
that all who look may learn. We have seen its application in 
the workings and deeds of men under the terrors of the Inqui- 
sition, and we will spend but a few sentences in farther tracing 
its application to the purposes of life. I will aim to show to 
the reader that it is owing to the desertion of reason, and the 
laws of nature, and the yielding to a mystic theology that all 
the confusion and wild ravings in the science of psychology have 
been brought about. 

It appears that psychology (the science of the soul, or me- 
taphysics) and theology have been inseparably connected from 
the earliest dawn of this science; so much so that the churches 
from age to age have been convulsed and split to pieces by the 
books that have been issued from time to time upon these sub- 
jects, as though God's holy and inspired word was to be subor- 
dinated to the wild and fanatical sallies of uninspired men. Thi» 
is undeniably so, and so much so that my whole aim in this in- 
vestigation is to show the misconceived duty, and consummate 
folly of the clergy in leaving the plain and practical precepts of 
the Bible, and entering the fields of distracting and intermin- 
able disputation. Were metaphysicians and Divines to confine 
themselves to the simple phenomena of mind as developed by 
the laws of God's natural revelation, the result would be the 
confirmation of his supernatural revelation* but they have shut 
out the light of reason, and giving to the dark and erratic feel- 
ings of the inner soul as the voice of God, a divine monitor or 
angel whispers, have dreamt their lives away, and written whole 
books of petty (Juibblings about thingless names and pompous 
nothings. The finite mind can never reach the infinite — conse- 



CONSCIENCE. 265 

quently in the investigation of God's works we shall be involv- 
ed, more or less, in error, and hence it is that when reason 
fails to give satisfaction, we are prone to resort to our mere 
feelings and emotions of soul, as inate and unerring divinity. 
The German psychologists and Divines have soothed stern reason 
and the unwelcome reahties of life by the pleasing emotions of 
transcendental mysticism and elysian reveries — a quietism well 
suited to the superstitious trainings of the German mind. I 
will here insert a few sentences from " MorelPs History of 
Modern Philosophy," to show the vascillation and confusion of 
the philosophic world : 

" What then is the next step to which the human mind 
advanced after sensationalism, idealism, and scepticism had ex- 
hausted their resources and left all in doubt ? The resource, 
we answer, in which the mind, the last of all takes refuge, is 
mysticism. Reason and reflection have apparently put forth 
all their power and ended in uncertainty. The mystic there- 
upon rises to view, and says to the rest of the philosophers 
around him — ye have all alike mistaken the road — ^ye have 
sought for truth from a totally incorrect source and entirely 
overlooked the one divine element within you, from which alone 
it can be derived. Reason is imperfect — it halts and stumbles 
at every step when it would penetrate into the deeper recesses 
of pure and absolute truth. But look within you — is there not 
a spiritual nature there that allies you with the spiritual world ? 
Is there not an enthusiasm which rises in all its energies when 
reason grows calm and silent ? Is there not a light that en- 
velopes all the faculties if you will only give yourself up to your 
better feelings, and listen to the voice of the God that speaks 
and stirs withm. To this source,, theny the mystic looks for a 
knowledge that far transcends the feeble results of our reflective 
faculties, and in which he would lay the basis of the highest 
and truest philosophy." 

There are more points for serious contemplation in the above 
few sentences, thaacan be found in the whole remaining portion 

12 



266 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

of the author's work. Morell is himself an hermaphrodite, but 
somewhat more of the feminine gender. He cannot be classed 
under the head of any of the systems or schemes of i)hilosophy. 
He displays no originality or the powers of a creative genius, 
and after vascillating through seven hundred and fifty-two pages 
of most bewildering trash, comes to no conclusion of who, or 
whethei any, among the numerous authors whom he reviews, 
are correct. He may, himself, be given as a fair specimen (in 
the study of human nature) of a man of great learning, but of 
no depth, solidity, or independence of mind. But we will re- 
turn from this short history he has given us of the perplexed 
condition of mental philosophy, to the question, and see how 
strangely wild the world has run in regard to their own exist- 
ence, as well as in search for the best laws of human govern- 
ment and the means of happiness here and hereafter. It will 
readily be seen in this, as well as in every other instance where 
we have been grossly and sadly led astray from the truth, that 
the error has been in discarding reason — the light of heaven — 
the only guide to God, and deserting our senses — the only in- 
lets to knowledge, and the valid witnesses of the soul. 

As we have said, space, duration, and God alone are un- 
bounded and eternal. We finite creatures of a day, therefore, 
can never reach the infinite, the eternal — designs and manifesta- 
tions of God's providence. If, therefore, we keep within the 
bounds that God has allotted us, we shall not become lost in 
the interminable labyrinths of mystery. Whenever we throw 
reason and common sense aside, and take mere feeling as a 
guide, we have lost both rudder and compass — to be tossed 
wildly astray upon the fathomless and boundless ocean. God 
has given us a Hne that will fathom and sound every foot of 
our way safely to the haven of eternal rest, if we will keep 
upon the shallows and within the bounds he has prescribed for 
us. Dissatisfied, however, with this limited allotment, we fancy 
ourselves Gods and that there is a quasi God within us that 
leads us bevond the bounds of reason and sense, and that can 



CONSCIENCE. 26t 

establish an incompatible and veritable entity of its own in- 
herent and marvellous powers. As Chalmers says, " God him^ 
self, being reason, cannot act inconsistently with reason, for in 
so doing he would annihilate himself," but this fancied God 
within us can defy reason and act contrary to the constitution 
and laws of our nature given us by our great creator. The 
doctrine of an internal and unerring monitor superior to reason 
is but the offspring of a chimerical and frenzied fanaticism, and 
as the ghosts and phantoms of midnight vanish before the 
rising sun, must these morbid musings vanish before the light 
of reason. Those supposed intuitional promptings are but vain 
and hopeless delusions which, if indulged in, would plunge us 
into the vortex of wild distraction and bitter contentions, from 
which would again arise the old scenes of horrid inhumanity. 
Where, I ask, in the name of the great and good God, is this 
sacred, intuitive monitor when one Christian drags the other to 
the stake ? Are they not both prompted by the same unerring 
guide to the most unhallowed and malignant deeds ? How wide 
from the truth, then, must be such doctrines, when God him- 
self is a unit and made of love, and were his professed followers 
possessed of the same spirit, they would most assuredly be 
united in the bonds of divine unity and brotherly friendship. 
This doctrine, I strongly suspect as being from the devil, as it 
is this, and this alone that has produced all the church-divisions 
and fiendish feuds that we see prevailing everywhere. Satan, 
on this account, has ever been opposed to reason, for well he 
knows that earthly thrones have trembled, and demon oppres- 
sion with all its gorgon forms has fled before the voice of reason, 
nor can the tricks of papal sourcery or the wiles of the devil 
himself stand against the might and majesty of reason. Reason, 
in short, is the voice of God and the best boon of heaven to 
man. Shall we, then, discard reason as the mystic Divines 
have done, and rest the salvation of souls and the happiness 
of man upon a mere creature of education. This adored con- 
science is as beguiling to the indolent mind as the ignis fatuus 



268 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

or the glaring meteor that thwarts the vault of heaven, and 
dies upon the welkin's bound — fair to be looked at, but false to 
follow. An evanescent, ephemeral creature, governed by time 
and place, and resting wholly upon the veering conventionalities 
of man. 

Let us again expose its inconsistencies and its want of 
adaptation to the purposes of life. For example, here are two 
neighbors, who, if left to reason, would live in harmony, but 
the pastor of one has got up a creed called election, and one 
of those brotherly neighbors, now becoming a church-member, 
and having sworn to maintain this conscience against all the 
other consciences of the world, he with dogmatical arrogance 
now demands of his neighbor to give credence to this inherent, 
this unerring and divine conscience that elevates the soul far 
above the power of poor human and vulgar reason, and bestows 
blessings, even life everlasting. His neighbor, in the mean- 
time, has joined an American Church and has had an imma- 
culate, immutable, and unerring conscience given to him by his 
own pastor, and consequently with indignation retorts: "I am 
conscious, sir, that your faith is the most hell-peopling that has 
ever been invented by man; besides it is a foul and slanderous 
libel against the justice and mercy of God, whereupon this 
divine and saving faith makes bitter enemies of neighbors and 
kindles the fires of destruction. Thus we see the danger of 
being carried away by such allurements — those mere feelings 
and emotions of soul. They are dangerously attractive to the 
superstitious and fanatical, and are the exclusive generators 
of witches, wizards, and all the fearful monsters that alarm 
children and fools. We must not forget that God has endowed 
us with reason as well as imagination, and that these lofty emo- 
tions, though pleasing to the aspiring soul, will not bear us out 
in the vicissitudes and struggles of life. A mystic lethargy 
amongst mental philosophers who found it easy to fall in the 
wake of the superstitious masses, and a sordid pusilanimity 



CONSCIENCE. 269 

amongst the priesthood who enter to the same feeling led both 
religion and philosophy wildly astray for many ages. 

After more than two thousand years of bewildered struggle 
in mental science, a great and leading light appeared in the 
person of Francis Bacon, who dragged those scholastic mystics 
from the dark closets, and exposed them to the light of day. 
He showed by unanswerable arguments that reason was given 
by God as our only guide to truth, and that whenever we de- 
serted poor human reason for a supposed divine monitor with- 
in, science would sink to insignificance, and our guide would 
prove a delusion and a mockery of all our hopes. Under 
Bacon's rule of Kationahsm there arose a Locke who rid the 
world of innate ideas, and of divine monitors, and subjected all 
things to the test of reason. And secondly, a Newton came 
forward who, by the aid of reason, not only looked through 
the departments of this world, but ascended high amidst the 
celestial spheres amongst other worlds and systems of worlds. 
But soon, however, philosophy fell back into the dark realms 
of superstition, and gave way to our mere feelings and delusive 
suggestions of soul. Amidst this distracted state of things, 
there appeared a bishop Berkely, who was so transcendental 
in his impulses that he boldly denied the existence of a material 
and external world. He contended that everything was re- 
presentative, that we had nothing in the mind but ideas, and as 
these ideas were not matter, we had no proof of the existence 
of matter ; and thus was established Berkeley's system of 
Idealism. 

Next upon the stage came David Hume, who with the great- 
est mind of the age, saw that the idealistic doctrine involved a 
gross absurdity, and that it struck at the foundations of all 
human knowledge. So he at once exposed it to ridicule and 
contempt, by showing plainly to the world that Berkeley by his 
own principles had destroyed both mind and matter, leaving 
us without either soul or body. From this scene of doubt and 
confusion arose Hume's system of scepticism, and next came 



2*70 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Pantheism and a renewed Mysticism, and lastly of all we have 
the school of Electicism, which in reality is nothing more nor 
less than a system made up of errors, but the least of errors of 
all the other schools. 

We might blazon our pages with the most glowing lights 
that ever shone upon earth, and yet could truthfully say that 
after all those mighty minds have been exhausted in the cause 
of human improvement and knowledge — that the world is left 
in darkness and in doubt. The schools of the present age, par- 
ticularly in Germany, are psychologised. They are asleep and 
subject to all the vagaries of their morbid imaginations. They 
yield to the fervid impulses and to the longings of their hearts, 
and hence the hallowed charm that encircles the soul, and 
buoys it up in its fond and extatic delusions and its elysian 
reveries. 

To convince the reader that I have not misrepresented the 
distracted condition of Mental Philosophy, I will here intro- 
duce a quotation from " Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Biography- 
American edition ; by Rev. Francis Hawks, D. D. L. L. D. 
of New-York." From the notice of Hume which occurs in 
that work, we make the following extract : 

" The place and functions of the methaphysical speculations 
of this great thinker, are not only peculiar, but unique in the 
History of Modern Philosophy. At the period in question, 
Mental Science had fallen into the lowest possible state, not 
only in Britain, but over Europe — that viz. : of a conscious in- 
consistency ; principles were accepted and conclusions evaded ; 
beliefs timidly relied on, betwixt which and all grounds of cer- 
tainty then acknowledged, lay an impassable hiatus. The sen- 
sational philosophy, always agreeable to the practical ten- 
dencies of the English mind, had just reached its culmination 
under the guidance of the genius and earnestness of John Locke, 
and we were undergoing its consequences in the dwarfing of 
systematic morals and the gradual impoverishment of Religion ; 
saving ourselves as to the mere form of faith, by refuge in tra- 



CONSCIENCE. 2tl 

dition, or, what is worst of all, willing subjection to gross para- 
logisms. When science exists only through paltering with 
reason, when it accepts as its function, not the office of dis- 
covering Truth, but of finding excuses for Belief, it is science 
no longer, but a corruption and hypocrisy ; and however it may 
come, its destruction is a blessing. Hume appeared as the 
destroyer. Grifted with an intellect clear and fearless, he car- 
ried principles remorselessly to their consequences ; and proved 
beyond question, that on the grounds of the existing philosophy, 
all belief must disappear. 

" If he reached Universal Scepticism, it may be said that he 
yet had a faith sounder than any in the philosophy he had de- 
stroyed ; he trusted in the only ground of human certainty, 
viz : in our human reason, and had the rare courage to follow 
where it seemed to lead. It is not easy to conceive the degree 
of consternation spread through every region of existing specu- 
lation by the ' Essay on the idea of necessary connexion,' the 
' Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,' the ' Natural 
History of Religion,' and their other companions. Hume had di- 
vested himself by this time of the scholastic rudeness of the Au- 
thor of the ' Treatise on Human Nature,' and become one of the 
most pleasing and accomplished writers of any period. His 
blows resounded accordingly through all cultivated Society. It 
was heard everywhere with amazement, that by atopic, apparent- 
ly invincible, the basis of all certainty concerning man, nature and 
God, had been destroyed, and that doubt inremediable was the 
sole inheritance of our race I It is needless to say that the 
resting place of humanity was saved ; but not by invalidating 
the reasoning of the trenchant Scotchman. Hume's triumph 
was complete, only it was the existing philosophy that he laid 
in ruins." 

Thus we have seen the practical result of this unerring in- 
tuition upon which a grave philosophy, and one that governs 
the world, is based, and from which religious sight seeing and 
spiritual revivals spring. I here boldly affirm it, and had I 

II 



212 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

room, I could more fully prove it, that it is upon this conscious, 
but deceptive feehng, and this alone that the numerous and 
ponderous books of modern philosophy are founded. It can- 
not, it will not be denied that every system, since they have left 
the true philosophy of Locke, is more or less alloyed with the 
counterfeit feeling, called a divine conscience, that has made Mo- 
hamedans, Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Calvinists, Arme- 
nians, and the ten thousand other conscious creeds. Strange, 
indeed, that we should give this discordant and whimsical 
creature the supremacy of reason, when it has led us so 
shamefully astray from the unity of truth, and giving so 
deadly and dooming a stroke to religion. This voice of God, 
so called by most of Divines and metaphysical writers, is no- 
thing more than a frenzied fanaticism : yet to reason against 
it is naught but folly ; for every party has seen its sights and 
dreamed its dreams, and is as firm as the maniac, fixed in his 
feelings. Such deplorable perversion of reason, and such 'deep- 
rooted and preconceived opinions can only be cured by a radi- 
cal change in the course of education. The youth should be 
taught to regard the might and majesty of divine appointment, 
and to take as their guide but the eternal fitness of things, 
as daily witnessed in the phenomena of nature. We should 
buckle on the sacred armor of truth, and with hearty fidelity 
pursue them as did Newton the powers of gravitation, lead 
where they may, for God in his works will be our guide and 
cannot err. We may be controverted and borne down by vul- 
gar prejudice and popular clamor, yet we must rise with firm 
and tranquil grandeur to those mighty and eternal verities, not 
of human vascillation, but as immutable and undying as God 
himself. The contemplation of the supremacy of such great 
and noble ends over the petty ephemeral conventionalities of 
man will inspire the youthful soul to ascend like the towering 
and eternal ramparts of nature, through the storm-cloud far 
above the thunder's brawl, where the unobstructed light of 
"heaven forever shines. The investigation and recognition of 



CONSCIENCE. 273 

the phenomena of nature must be by observation, experience 
and comparison, guided by a clear and unbiassed reasoo. All 
mysticisms and gratuitous and random assumptions as hereto- 
fore, must be cast aside as worthless and perplexing trash, and 
nature, and nature alone, made the ground-right and stand- 
point of observation This is the only solid foundation and im- 
moveable platform upon which to erect the lever by which the 
world is to be moved. The systems of philosophy for past 
ages have been rested upon the air, and been just as fluctuating 
as that fluctuating element. In proof of this to the uninformed 
reader, I refer him to the various distracted and warring sys- 
tems of modern mental philosophy. I hold that from the days 
of Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Leibnitz, Spinoza, 
Hobbes, Stewart, Reid, Brown, and a hunderd other writers, 
there has been no improvement nor a single platform agreed 
to, upon which to erect a system of sound and lasting philosophy ; 
each in turn having exhausted themselves in lashing the air 
and the mists that envelope them without leaving a single 
mark of their mighty exertions behind them. Cousin, Hamilton 
and Morell have more recently attempted a reformation by a 
system of electicism, but, after all, have left the science of 
mind in darkness and in doubt. 

In closing my remarks upon conscience, I will say, that, 
though there is no unerring standard of conscience, it being in 
reality nothing more than the result of opinion, and opinion 
itself being the result of education and circumstances. Yet it 
is the only criterion that each individual can have for his own 
conduct, and were we as forgiving as our Heavenly Father, all 
persecutions and religious wranglings about creeds and confes- 
sions of faith would cease. " One believeth that he may eat 
all things, another who is weak, eateth herbs. One man 
esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day 
alike." Again, St. Paul says : "Let every man be fully per- 
suaded in his own mind." And again: " I know and am per- 
suaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of it- 



2t4 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

self, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him 
it is unclean." That is, it is wrong for any man to violate his 
own sense of duty, it matters not how much it may differ from 
others. Any man who acts, intending a crime, to him it is a 
crime; but the same act, if conscientiously perfprmed up to the 
best lights afforded, to him it is a virtue. And hence it is that 
I have abhorred, and in bold language condemned those fiend- 
ish and ensanguined scenes of persecution for opinion's sake. 
And, again, " He that doubteth is condemned, if he cat, because 
he eateth not of faith ; for whatsoever is not of faith is sin." 
That is, if we do a thing believing it to be wrong, to us it is a 
wrong. Our honest convictions, then, is the only unerring 
standard and moral law of human action, and the consent of 
mankind to this divine truth, and that alone, can ever harmon- 
ize the human family, and reconcile the endless organisms, 
aptitudes and conditions of life, in which God himself has placed 
us. The poor savage cannot help his condition any more than 
the pious man, can with all his efforts avoid the sorely afflictive 
dispensations of providence, and it would be flying into the face 
of God, and daring the wrath of heaven, to blame them for 
it. An honest conviction and a pure heart is all that God can 
ask. "Keep they heart with all diligence; because out of it 
are the issues of life." " Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God." And, more to the point: " But when 
the Gentiles which have not the law, do hy nature the things 
contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto 
themselves, which show the work of the law written in their 
hearts ; their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts 
the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." Now, if 
the Apostle's view of the case, as above given, be not true, I 
cannot conceive of any other standard by which we are to be 
judged: for it is certain that our conscientious views are as 
different as the forms of our faces, and the endless organisms, 
which, by the hand of God, makes us identically what we are, 
and not another. Suppose, for instance, a revolution be pro- 



CONSCIENCE. 2Y5 

posed, under a given government, some will think it right, 
while others, equally honest and interested, will think it wrong. 
Under the law of domestic slavery, a slave of enlarged and 
enlightened mind, who has been cruelly treated, cannot see, in 
conscience and in common justice, and by the approbation of 
the God who made him, why his nation may not, as well as 
others, free themselves from arbitrary and cruel oppression; while 
another slave, having had a kind master and a happy home, 
has a conscience to think it so unjust and murderous as to in- 
form upon their brother and oppose the plot. These are cases 
of common occurence, and in which conscience is diametrically 
opposite. In forming a judgment of right and wrong, all de- 
pends upon circumstances. In America, no man feels any 
compunction of conscience in hunting and killing game on 
others grounds, nor in breaking a switch, or pulling an apple, 
when, if in England, he would feel it a crime. Captain Cook 
relates, in his voyage to the Sandwich Islands, that the inhabit- 
ants evinced a thievish disposition, openly attempting to take 
everything they fancied, as though it belonged to them, seeming 
to have no knowledge of individual rights. This was as natural 
as the cases I have named, of hunting, or of taking water from 
a neighboring creek; the soil and climate being such in those 
islands as to produce more of all the necessaries of life than 
could be used, Every thing was as exhaustless and common 
as the air we breath, the waters which run, or the sun that shines; 
and they saw no more harm- in taking what they found, than we do 
in taking water from a public well, or a creek that runs through 
other's lands. We have become so selfish in our vain glory and 
civilized graspings, that we would monopolize the air itself, and 
the sunshine, if we could, and parcel them out by the quart, at 
prices which would leave thousands of our poor fellow-mortals 
to perish, as has been done in soil and food. But in proof of 
my position. Captain Cook further relates, that as soon as those 
people discovered, in great suprise, the selfishness of the crew, 



276 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

who treated it as a wrong, they cautiously withheld, showing 
plainly that they did not before view it as a crime. 

While at this point, I will relate an interesting narrative in 
the history of man, given me by an old french captain, whose 
vessel I was on when passing those islands. He had lived 
amongst the * * * * * for eight years and being well ac- 
quainted with their language, he assured me that such was the 
honesty and kind feeling amongst those people, that they had 
no words to express liar, rascal, or thief, for such thing as 
steahng, quarreling, or fighting he never knew. On his first 
arrival, he was pressed by a number of the natives to take 
lodgings with them. He accepted the invitation of one, who 
put him to bed with his wife, assuring him that this was no 
more than a mark of hospitality, and that a refusal would be 
a mortification to his wife and a proof that he did not accept 
of his kindness. Next morning he asked him how he liked his 
wife, and on getting the pleasing answer, very well, the hus- 
band threw his arms around his neck, and pulling off his own 
shirt, put it upon him, exclaiming, now you live with me, for 
you are my brother. The amatory feeling, so selfish and ex- 
clusive generally, and considered by most of authors as innate, 
is not so, for history tells us that the Cythians and other na- 
tions have offered their wives and daughters as the greatest 
mark of social courtesy, and even up to this day it is practised 
amongst some nations; so that in this case, as well as all others, 
we will find upon a full investigation of the history of man, 
that there are no such things as innate ideas. We know that 
the things we most enjoy we most disHke to divide with others, 
and consequently become watchful and jealous of any inter- 
ference. We have no such ideas or feelings, however, till time 
and experience gives us a knowledge of what objects in nature 
are fitted to our constitutions, and calculated to give us that 
pleasure of which we become so tenacious, and consequently 
induces superficial observers to believe them innate. If those 
feelings were innate, they would be stronger in children than 



CONSCIENCE. 2TT 

in adults, when, in reality, we find no such ideas in children. 
And again, if there be any actual innate knowledge, belief cr 
judgment of men and things, or of right and w:ong in this 
world, it should be found most conspicuous in young children 
and savages, where neither education nor the force of circum- 
stances had defaced or counteracted it. Circumstances, how- 
ever, as we will soon see, changed these people very much. 
About the time the captain left, there was a mission established 
on the island, and when he returned, some years after, instead 
of a sober, truthful, honest and kindly brotherhood, he found 
them a set of drunken, lying, thieving, and jealous Christians, 
professing mechanically to believe what was taught them, but, 
like many of our professors at home, having no change wrought 
either in their heart or private actions. All the evils of what 
we boastingly call civilization followed the mission. Goods for 
traffic, which temptation led them to immitate our people in 
ambition and extravagance. Next came intoxicating liquors, 
and tricking and cheating, for which we are everywhere no- 
torious. Our adventurers, of course, rept a rich harvest off of 
those credulous people, but made them like themselves, suspi- 
cious, false, and cold-hearted. The captain, on his revisit, 
found that they had picked up English words enough to say 
rascal, liar, and rogue, and the devil ever at the heels of profes- 
sors, was engendering a jealous and persecuting spirit amongst 
these once happy, but now split and warring religious parties, 
in the bosom of this eden of the world, where naught but in- 
nocence, kindness, and happiness once dwelt. 

I wish it here to be understood, as well as in all other 
parts of my little book, that when I speak of false religion, 
that I do not mean genuine religion, for there could not be 
counterfeits in anything without something to contrast with, 
and when I speak of unworthy clergy and professors, I do not 
mean that all are so. That Satan has ever been at the heels 
of God's people, cannot be denied, and that he gets all of each 
thousand but one, is certain. He commenced early with God's 



2Y8 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

farorites in the garden and seduced them, next we see him going 
hand in hand with Abraham and Sarah, tempting Sarah at 
every turn l:o ^ell her virtue, and Abraham to connive at it for 
the sake of worldl}* gain, and great were the riches they thus 
collected, obtaining from Abimelech alone a thousand pieces of 
silver, with sheep, oxen, and men-servants and women-servants, 
the reward of his deception in denying Sarah and putting her 
out to other men. And again, Abraham was induced to take 
his servant Hagar to wife, and then, from jealousy of his old 
wife, most cruelly drove her and her child, his own offspring, 
to the wilderness. Even when the miraculous delivery of God's 
chosen, was fresh in their memory, and Moses was personally 
called upon by the Lord to go up into the mount and receive 
the commandments, the devil appeared amongst them, at the 
foot of the mountain, and tempted them to the worship of 
idols. Through Adam he caused the destruction of the world, 
and then he began the new generation, or re-peopling of the 
world, through the drunkenness and incest of Noah, a worse 
example and beginning than that of Adam himself. He caused 
David, a man after God's own heart, to commit one of the 
blackest crimes known to earth, and Solomon, the wise, he made 
more unwise and worse than Brigham Young himself, the new 
bugbear of the religious world. He, certainly, caused God's 
select and elect people, the Jews, not to be saved, as was anti- 
cipated and promised, but to be scattered and lost amongst the 
ungodly of God's wide world. Yes, and this same old prince 
of darkness tempted Christ's chosen disciples, one after another, 
to desert and deny him, and even followed him into the wilder- 
ness and to the mountain-top, and there boldly urged his 
temptations, face to face. Yes, and it is well known that he 
in the end caused these chosen people of God to crucify Christ. 
It cannot, then, from this brief history of facts, be supposed 
that T misrepresent, when I say, that the devil is ever at tlie 
heels of our missionaries, nor is it strange that he should make 



i 



CONSCIENCE. 2T9 

vagabonds of the uninformed and mechanical converts about 
those missions, as I have long observed. 

The Captain's narrative of the Sandwich Mission reminds 
me of what took place under my own observation amongst a 
western tribe of Indians, the most upright, sober and honest I 
ever knew ; good enough to a man, for heaven (without that 
contemptible vanity and selfish boast of name, the chief merit 
of the white man,) for they bore with Christian fortitude all 
the grievous outrages of our flibustering boarder-ruffians. 
A missionary applied to the Chief for the privilege of estab- 
lishing a mission amongst them. The Chief asked him what 
he expected to do for his people, and whether he could make 
them sober, honest,^ kind and truthful ; and upon receiving the 
answer. Yes, he solemny rebuked him by the wisest and most 
philosophic of all advices. "If this be true, sir, go back 
to your own people who understand your language, and 
what Cliristianity means, and when you make truthful, sober, 
honest and good men of your Christians, come to me, and my 
people shall hear you. Your Christians bring whiskey and 
tempting goods amongst us — lie, cheat and insult our wives 
and daughters, and if we resist, shoot us and threaten us with 
destruction by your nation. The Great Spirit we worship 
admits of no such fraud and cruelties, and we do not wish to 
desert hira for the God of such Christians as come amongst us.'^ 
The whites at this time were boasting of the number of In- 
dians they had disgracefully betrayed and cruelly butchered. 
One of the young braves, having had his father murdered, shot 
a white man which, as usually, got up a great excitement at 
the out-posts, and a war was at once threatened, except the 
murderer were brought in. The Chief of the tribe called upon 
the officers and assured them that he did not know the guilty 
person, but that his people were not like ours, to sneak and 
hide from the authority of their nation, and all he had to do, 
was to put out a proclamation, when the person sought would 
appear before them. In a few days the young brave came in, 



280 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and the chief delivered him over to the authorities of the gar- 
rison at Prairie du Chien, requesting that they would burn or dis- 
patch him as soon as possible, as he had come to see him die as 
a man ; upon which the officers informed him that imprison- 
ment and delay by courts was necessary. This could not be 
understood by the prisoner, who assured them that he would 
offer no resistance, and supposing they wished to cow him by 
confinement, he exclaimed : "My father was murdered, I have 
had revenge, and am ready to die. I feel no crime in taking 
life for life in accordance with the laws of my nation, and now 
submit my life to your law. I care not for your prison and 
chains, or for the pain you can inflict ; the Great Spirit waits 
to see me die like a brave, and is ready to receive my soul !" 
And thus speaking, he took from the hand of the old Chief a 
stole which he had just whittled out, and driving it in on one 
side of his thigh, pulled it out upon the other, holding up the 
bloody instrument in the officer's face, saying that he was at 
their defiance, for they could only kill his body, and that no 
pain they could inflict, would break his spirit, or cause him to 
disgrace his nation. This operation he often repeated, driving 
the stole through and through the thick of his thigh, without 
changing a feature. These facts were related to me a few days 
after their occurrence, by Lieutenant Davess of the fort, who 
was present at the occurrence in 1832. 

It is a well-known fact in the history of man, that the 
savage will exultingly mount upon the flaming pile and broil 
himself to death, without changing a feature ; showing what I 
aim to teach throughout this book : the power of education 
and circumstances over the human mind, and that there is no 
such things as innate ideas, there being no identity either 
in thought or action, all yielding to the force of circumstances 
in the various conditions of human life. These narratives may 
seem to be a digression from the argument, but as I propose 
to give the history of man from his cradle to his grave, they 
are perfectly legitimate j besides, a few facts of this kind will 



CONSCIENCE. 281 

show more clearly the true and varied character of man, and how 
that character is formed under the circumtances of his exist- 
ence, than a thousand volumes of abstract, vague, indefinite and 
learned nonsense, such as now fill our books of moral and 
mental science. In pursuance of this same history of facts, I 
will mention another, v/ell worthy the serious consideration of 
the Christian philosopher, how it is, and what can be the 
cause of the great honesty under the influence of the Moham- 
medan religion, and the very great dishonesty every where 
found under our more civilized and Christian government. 
It is a notorious fact, related by all impartial and observing 
travelers, that merchants in Constantinople never close or bar 
their doors on going out, except there be Christians about ; 
and when travelling, if the day turns warm, a person may 
throw their cloak on the road-side, with the certainty of finding 
it on their return. 

Now I wish it recollected, that when I speak of the many 
great and grievous defects in the moral tendency of our 
religion, I do not mean in the practice of it, but that it is in 
our mistaken instructions and pretensions to it. Were we to 
observe the precepts of Christ, and to follow his example, 
there could be no defect in the Christian religion ; but since we 
have deserted Christ and adopted the worship of creed-makers, 
the devil has had unstayed supremacy over the church, and it 
is devilish and downright dishonesty to deny it. My whole 
object in publishing these essays, has been to expose the above 
fact, and to add my mite in the restoration of the simple, pure- 
hearted, and unfeigned worship of Grod. I am well assured 
that so long as a united belief in the teachings of Christ, and 
a brotherly love and unalloyed piety hold possession of our 
hearts, the devil can obtain no influence over us. 

I am at a loss what more to say about conscience, as I have 
treated of it more or less under every other head, it in reality 
being nothing separate from that sentient and percipient being, 
called soul or mind, and into which all the separate heads, im- 



282 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

properly treated of, as powers and faqulties resolve them- 
selves. To have a conscience, is to be conscious of a thing, and 
to be conscious of a thing is to know a thing — believe it — 
think it so — to be assured of it — to judge it so — to have reason 
to believe so — to be confirmed, persuaded, or convinced of it — 
or in fine to feel that it is so, for feeling is the soul, and the 
soul is feeling. A thing without feeling and knowledge or a 
consciousness of impressions, can have no soul, while to be 
sensitive, or to be possessed of an accute perception of all in- 
structions or impressions of whatsoever kind, is to have a sonl. 
We feel, and therefore infer we have a soul, and I boldly affirm 
that this is the only proof we have of a soul. If a red-hot 
iron be applied to your surface, you feel it, and may incumber 
that feeling with many substituted words that can neither add 
to nor take from the simple fact of being conscious of it, for, 
as I have said, we cannot be conscious of a thing without 
feeling it, nor feel and know it without being conscious of 
it; and why then make so many separate and complicated 
departments of this one identical thing, feeling or conscious- 
ness. To teach, as is done in our colleges, that that unit, feel- 
ing, when applied to a belief of right and wrong, makes it a se- 
parate or independent faculty or power, is to teach as falsely as 
did Professor Alexander of the theological school at Princeton, 
who was so blinded in this polytheistic deity of the mind, 
that he affirmed one of these powers, the will, to be so inde- 
pendent of the soul, that the soul was not responsible for 
the acts of the will. Absurd as this doctrine may seem 
to one who has been a close observer of the operations of 
his own mind through life, the great divisibility of an indi- 
visible soul is still kept up greatly to the perplexity of 
the pupil, who cannot comprehend an incomprehensible and 
impossible thing, A man may change his name for every 
hour of the day and for every act he performs, yet he is 
identically the same man, and the soul, in like manner, may 
love, hate, and have ten thousand thoughts, passions and 



CONSCIENCE. 283 

emotions possessing it alternately, and yet not loose its identity 
of being. 

Much has been said and written, in regard to the laws, rules 
and obligations of moral action, and why we are bound to any 
particular course of virtue. Paley's Moral Philosophy has 
been greatly misrepresented and the author much abused for 
his sentiments upon this subject. Paley says that the will of 
God is the rule of moral action, and in other parts of his 
book, that the good of society binds us to act virtuously. His 
position that the will of God should be the rule of moral obli- 
gation, is said to be false and arbitrary, and does not reach the 
source of moral obligation which such objectors contend was 
anterior to and independent of the word and commands of 
God. This is in one sense true, which fact Paley knew as well 
as Chalmers or any of his school, that there is an inherent and 
eternal Tightness in the nature and fitness of things, and that 
the arbitrary command of God cannot make a right, as that 
command must be founded upon a right, and made, because it 
is right. Paley also knew that God, from his own inherent 
nature, would not violate these great and prim ordeal principles, 
and therefore very justly taught, the will of God was the safest 
rule both of religious and moral action. Chalmers and many 
other petty quibblers upon good old Paley's doctrines, say he 
does not reach first principles, and that his teaching the good 
of society to be a main obligation of moral conduct, is danger- 
ous to the morals of our youth, and that his book should there- 
fore be thrown out of our schools. This obligation to the 
good of society Paley's objectors pronounce to be Utilitarianism, 
and not only false in morals, but corrupting in its tendencies. 
"We know that virtue has an inherent, independent and eternal 
Tightness that constitutes the ultimate and highest possible 
ground and obligation of moral rectitude ; but how this can 
invalidate Paley's position, I cannot conceive, as the will of 
God and the good of man must come within their own cate- 
gory of moral rights. True, that acting with the will of God 



284 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRATE. 

and for the good of man does not date back to the primordeal 
principles upon which God's will was founded, nor go beyond 
the creation of man for man's good, yet as God's will had its 
foundation in the eternal fitness of things, and as he has created 
man to be happy, it certainly can neither be corrupting to 
virtue nor detrimental to the happiness of man, to act in ac- 
cordance with the will of God. Nothing could more clearly 
show the vanity and litigious spirit, of Chalmers and other 
distinguished Divines, than their disingenuous and unfounded 
attack upon the inestimable labors of their pious old brother, 
William Paley. Chalmers says that " virtue has an inherent 
character of her own, apart from law, and anterior to all juris- 
diction. Instead, therefore, of deriving morality from law, 
we should derive law, even the law of God, from the primeval 
morality of his unavoidable, immutable and eternal nature." 
And again, he says that " the great and everlasting principles 
of God's moral law had their residence in the very constitution 
and nature of the God-head, before he willed it as a law or 
uttered it forth in his book of revelation." 

The Rev. J. R. Boyd, in his moral philosophy, says that 
" virtue hath a higher original than the will of God." Now, 
though God may have had all the conceptions of supreme 
moral excellence, as well as the efficient plans of his gorgeous 
universe, in his mind, before he uttered his moral law or showed 
forth his mighty w^orks; it does not prove that the will of God 
is dangerous or unsafe, as a guide of moral action for erring 
man. The idea of Chalmers, Dick, Devvar, Boyd, and others 
of the Chalmers' school of high-tossing and primordial flourishes, 
is that God has been bound by the moral necessity of his nature 
to do and say all he has; and that, as his laws and acts have 
been founded upon an anterior, inherent, underived, independent, 
and eternal rightness in the nature and fitness of things them- 
selves, he could not, by any possibility of consistency or moral 
justice, have acted other than he has. Thus is God himself, 
from the inviolate and eternal supremacy of truth and justice, 



CONSCIENCE. 285 

and the perfections of his own nature, bound to act in accord- 
ance with the laws of moral justice. The law of Grod, then, is 
not right, because he has arbitrarily commanded it, but he 
commanded it, because it was right. Now, though Paley's 
philosophy has been condemned, because suspected of Arianism, 
how will Chalmers' own showing of God being bound by a 
paramount law of eternal justice apply to God's giving to his 
harmless pots, acute sensibilities, and ill shapes in order, by 
whim, to cast them into hell, regardless of the mighty law of 
eternal justice, by which he is eternally bound to do justice. 

Thus we see, that, though Paley, because he allows other 
people to go to heaven, as well as himself, has been condemned, 
while the orthodox Chalmers is permitted with impunity to 
make God a mere copyist, whose laws are nothing more than 
transcripts from the tablets of an antidated, underived, un- 
alterable, and independent Tightness in the nature of things 
themselves. 

My object has been and will be, throughout these essays, 
to open the eyes of the community to the glaring abuse of reli- 
gion, and of the consequent want of truth and honesty, in our 
Christian land, improperly so called. The countless millions 
of money spent, and the vast amount of labor used in the gar- 
dens of God, during a period of 1859 years, have but served 
to bring forth thorns and thistles, which will in time be sweeped 
off with the besom of destruction. I fear that the Christian 
religion has become so interwoven with the worldly interests, 
and with the pride and ambition of man, that there can be no 
farther hope for reformation. Both religion and politics have 
become a trade of cold and studied artifice, and the pride of 
party and the pomp of the world, is the ruling passion in every 
man's breast. It cannot be said, that I exaggerate, when 
every religious paper and every pulpit in our land, sounds the 
tocsin of the alarming increase of crime in our Christian com- 
munity. 



INSTINCT. 

On this subject there certainly has been as much idle 
controversy as upon any other that has ever been agitated, and 
all arising, I am well assured, from an unjust prejudice against 
the poor brute, and a selfish, contracted, and unjust fear of 
their rivalship in crowding the seats of heaven, which are doubt- 
less ample for all God's creatures, shall he see proper to take 
them there. 

The Rev. Sydney Smith, in his "Moral Philosophy," says: 
" There are observable in the minds of brutes faint traces and 
rudiments of the human faculties." This position, he goes on 
to say, has been maintained by Reid, Locke, Hartly, Stewart, 
and all the best writers on these subjects. The two extremes 
in writers may be found in Descartes, who looked upon the 
brute as a mere machine, and Helvetius, who says: " he is quite 
certain that we only owe our superiority over the Ourang 
Outangs to the length of life conceded to us." Between those 
two extremes hundreds of volumes have been written — each 
author taking his direction, not under the guidance of reason 
and the light of nature, but according to his contracted and 
preconceived prejudices. Such, indeed, has been the extent of 
vulgar prejudices against the brute, that all who have had a 
soul to feel for our poor dumb servants, and a fortitude to de- 
clare it, have been denounced as defamers of the human race; 
and this is doubtless the reason why the Rev. Sydney Smith 
begins his article on instinct thus: 

" I confess I treat on this subject with some degree of ap- 
prehension and reluctance, because I shall be very sorry to do 
injustice to the poor brutes, who have no professors to revenge 

286 



INTSTINCT. 28 T 

their cause, by lecturing on our faculties, and at the same time 
I know there is a very strong anthropical party wlio view all 
eulogiuras on the brute creation with a very considerable degree 
of suspicion, and look upon every compliment which is paid to 
the ape as high treason to the dignity of man." 

Such mean envy and selfishness I consider by far more de- 
grading to human nature than any analogy that can be summed 
up between the brute and man. Uncle Toby let the fly go 
from a kind sympathy and God-like feeling for God's humbler 
creatures, saying, there was room enough in the world for both. 
And I cannot see whence comes this cruel envy and disposition 
to rob the poor brute of the little their kind Creator has given 
them. If the idiot be allowed a soul, and the ape deprived of 
it, the grant cannot be upon the superiority of mind, and why 
then make man the exclusive possessor because of his mental 
rank in the scale of organic life. Again, if the soul is to claim 
rank and superiority according to its strength and varied powers, 
Shakespeare is certainly entitled to the first seat in heaven, 
and if this rule be not established, as Dicke and others have 
striven at, in their scale of progression, why entirely deprive 
so many of God's creatures of a soul because of a slight in- 
feriority of mind, much less than exists between the races of 
men themselves. I have heard many say that they did not be- 
lieve that the degraded Africans who were made for slaves, had 
a soul, and that it would be degrading and offensive to the 
master for their advocates so to contend, as this might establish 
an equal claim and equality in heaven. No doubt that many 
a despot would think it humiliating in God himself, to admit 
the humble and degraded of earth into their presence, but of 
all this uneasiness they may be relieved, as was Dives, by having 
assigned to themselves a bed in hell, where there shall be ample 
room for all the despotic oppressors of earth. 1 well know that 
in thus sustaining the unfortunate and humble of earth, I shall 
give offence to the ignorance and arrogance of many a bigot, and 
particularly such as claim the exclusive inheritance of heaven from 



288 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

all eternity. But in this, as in «very other case, I will sustain 
my position by the sacredness of truth and justice. It has been 
objected to the brutes, and even to the more degraded classes 
of man that they have no moral conscience or correct view of 
religion. This is an arbitrary and equivocal expression, for 
though every bigot professes to know what true religion is, he 
may differ with others and be punished on earth even to death, 
for heresy. The best test of religion, in my humble opinion, is 
to act as God has designed us to do, and this the brute does, 
while man has rebelled and been destroyed with a curse, and 
yet does he, with unblushing effrontery, come forward and sit in 
judgment, not only upon the consciences of his fellow-mortals, 
but upon the happiness and destiny of all other portions of 
God's creation. But the brute, it is said, acts under the direct 
guidance of God himself, or the inherent nature he has placed in 
them, while man is left a wreck upon the stormy ocean of life, 
under the contingent guidance of that corrupt nature entailed 
upon him by Adam, and subject to the intrigues of Satan and 
of evil spirits. Be it so. Yet in this argument of the con- 
demner of the brute I cannot see where, in the eyes of God, 
they can claim a just superiority over those less offending sub- 
jects of their Creator? 

After this exposure of the unjust prejudice against the 
brute, and the bigot's puerile showings of any superior moral 
or religious claim that traitorous man has over those faithful 
and obedient brutes as we degradingly see proper to call them, 
we will give a couplet from Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy : 

" What hath the faithful dog less than reason. 
Or the hrute man more than instinct?" 

Many more quotations might be made from men of true 
philosophy and Christian spirit to the same point, but as 
argument is before all authority I will resume it. 

In regard to any just claim to God's favor that man may 
have over the brute, or the brute over man, it has nothing to 



i 



INSTINCT. 289 

do with the question as to what is really the meaning of in- 
stinct. Had authors defined their positions, there, certainly, 
could never have been any honest pretext for controversy, as 
the whole subject resolves itself simply into the will of God or 
the fixed laws of the animal economy, and the only question 
that can be asked, is, why God did as he did in giving to all 
things their inherent nature. The instinct of an animal is 
nothing more than the nature of an animal, and as that animal 
did not create itself, the ultimate question will always return 
upon us, why or how God made it so ? We might as rationally 
spend our time in arguing, why the beast was given hair, and 
the bird feathers ? And one made to fly in the air, and the 
other to walk on the earth ? They are both instincts, nor is 
there any original principle or property but that is instinct, if 
instinct means anything. If by the word instinct we mean an 
innate, connate, primordial or congenital faculty, principle, 
power or property, then the question is with God, and returns 
upon us as before, and puts the question to an end. For what 
God did is done and admits of no dispute other than why he 
has so done. And if, on the contrary, we agree that the word 
instinct means an acquired knowledge, faculty, principle, power 
or property, there is yet no room for any difference of opinion, 
as every honest man must grant, that both man and beast gains 
much by time, observation, and experience. God's primitive 
properties or attributes consist of power, wisdom and goodness 
that make him what he is, and take them from him, and you 
annihilate him as a God. Gold is what it is by its properties, 
but take color, solidity, and extension from it, and you leave 
nothing; and in like manner is it with all things in creation, 
so that at last we depend upon a primitive power or capacity 
for every acquired property, which again returns the question 
upon us in a different form, who gave us those powers ? — to 
acquire what we do acquire ? God gave them, and the only 
question left after all is how or why ? The acorn has implanted 
in it by its creator the capacity to develope the oak with all 

13 



290 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

its varied and specific properties that make it what it is, and 
distinguish it from every other tree. The egg has in it the 
chicken, and in like manner, every animal is what it is by the 
power and will of its original designer, and it is puerile and 
presumptuous to dispute it. If one, either ignorant or dishonest 
enough to invite controversy, will af&rm that every seed brings 
forth its kind that God originally designed, I grant the fact, 
and should he say that a tree acquires its bark, branches and 
roots by growth and the aid of the elements that sustain it, I 
grant the fact, and just so both with the animal and mineral 
kingdoms. To admit a God, the author of all things, is to 
admit all I have said, and how, then, but by the denial of a 
God, are we to get up a difference of opinion about instincts, 
or in other words, why things are as they are, other than by 
the sovereign and unalterable will of the eternal designer. If 
an adversary take the position that there are spontaneities in 
existence, and that the government of the universe is casual or 
contingent, then we are cast loose upon the limitless and track- 
less ocean without either compass or designated port of entry, 
and we might as well dispute about the hmits of space or the 
end of time, as the why of ultimate results. All phenomena 
are at once merged in the chaotic and inscrutable fortuities of 
uncaused and unauthorized agencies under which the universe 
must inevitably tumble into ruins. Thus I think that in giving 
the true position of this question, the reader must be convinced 
that if there be a God, the author of all things, all things must 
be instinct or, in other words, inborn. Now, as the specific 
capacity and mental tendency of every animal must depend 
upon the organization God has given it, all we can rationally 
do, is to trace these tendencies and point out the differences in 
degrees. 

We know the beast to be possessed of every characteristic 
of intellect that distinguishes mind from matter, and I must 
farther say, of every faculty of the human mind, and only differs 
from it in degree, as one mind differs from another. 'Now, as 



INSTINCT. 291 

oflfensive as this doctrine may be to some, I conscientiously hold 
it to be undeniably and religiously true, and if in this close 
identity there be a fault, it is not in the writer, but in the 
creator — God himself. Sensation, the soul of soul, the founda- 
tion and great fountain of love, of moral rectitude, of sympathy, 
of kindness and virtue, cannot be denied to the brute. They 
have pleasure and pain, love and hatred, hope and fear, in 
common with man. Hope will ever turn the course of a horse 
homeward, and if you give him rein, he will press on with as 
much labored anxiety, as a man in seeking his beloved home. 
He is very social, and from kind attachments to his companions, 
will, when separated from them, become as frantic and dis^ 
tressed, as a human, when separated from his friends. The 
faithful dog is more to be trusted as an unflinching friend than 
man in the same circumstances. For in times of danger maa 
will desert man, while the dog will fight to the death for his 
master, and there are many instances where the dog has pined 
-to death for the loss of his friend. A dog in Cincinnati was 
so notorious for his kind attachment and melancholy bereave- 
ment as often to be noticed in the public papers. Upon the 
death of his master, he lay by his corpse and followed him to 
his grave, and when they put him in, the dog looked down, 
whined, and ran round and howled with great distress, and 
evinced in every way, that a human could, the greatest possible 
anguish. Nor did he leave the grave for days and nights, till 
hunger drove him home, but soon he returned to the grave 
with solemn and melancholy step, and never afterwards did he 
seek the company or companionship of other dogs. It was a 
well known fact that no interment ever took place from the 
interment of his master to the death of himself that he was 
not present. 

" The dog may have a spirit as well as his brutal master, 
A spirit to live ia happiness, for why should he be robbed of his existence? 
Hath he not a conscience of evil, a glimmer of moral sense ? 
Love and hatred, courage and fear, and a visible shame and pride ? 
There may be a future rest for the patient victims of the cruel. 
And a season allotted for their bliss to compensate for unjust suffering." 



292 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

The above are the beautiful and pathetic sentiments of 
Tupper. 

Mj son had a dog, he called Ponto, that was more attached 
to him than I ever saw one human to another. Montrose, (my 
son,) let Ponto take a book in his mouth and accompany him 
on his way to school as far as the top step of the style, at which 
point he ordered him to stop and not go on to the streets in 
town. Ponto soon learned his hour of return from College, 
and never failed to meet him at the style, which was regularly 
kept up with invariable fidelity for more than a year, and up 
to the time of his death. It was really distressing to see the 
affectionate creature sitting on the style and looking with such 
intense anxiety down the street, and if the time was delayed, 
he would whine and set up a doleful howKng, and then of a 
sudden, a thought would seem to strike him that his master may 
have come in some other way, and round the lot he would dash, 
as though crazy, with his nose to the ground. After thus 
coursing around the buildings and finding that he had not come 
in by any other path, he would with full speed return again to 
the style as before, evince great anxiety at his master's delay. 
I have often sympathized with the poor creatures distress and 
tender solicitudes, nor could I but know from actual experience 
with the world that but few of the human race exhibited such 
divinity of feeling. No meeting of dearly beloved and long 
parted friends could be more joyous than the daily return of 
Montrose from College. Ponto with an extatic grin and audible 
laughing, that showed all his teeth, would frisk around for a 
time, and then take his books and deliberately walking up stairs, 
lay them on the table. Ponto found, by hunting with his 
master, that he was fond of rabbits, so that setting out early 
one morning he caught one by fair running, and took it up 
stairs to his master, who being asleep, Ponto woke by gently 
pawing at the bed clothes and turning over, Ponto picked up 
the rabbit, saying as plainly in thought, as language could ex- 
press it: " Here it is 1" 



INSTINCT. 



293 



From one among tne many celebrated poets who have born 
witness to the dog's devoted attachment to man, we quote the 
following bitter but beautiful reflections: 

*' When some proud son of man returns to earth, 
Unknown to glory but upheld by birth, 
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe 
And storied urns record who rests below: 
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen, 
Not what he was — but what he should have been 
'■ But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend — 

The first to welcome, foremost to defend — 
Whose honest heart is all his master's own — 
Who labors, fights, lives, breaths for him alone; 
Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth — 
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth . 
While man, vain insect, hopes to be forgiven, 
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven. 
Oh man ! thou feeble tenant of an hour, 
Debased by slavery or corrupt by power, 
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust- 
Degraded mass of animated dust 
Thy love is lust — thy friendship all a cheat — 
Thy smiles hypocrisy — thy words deceit; 
By nature vile — ennobled but by name, 
Each kindred brute might bid the blush for shame. 
Ye who perchance behold this simple urn. 
Pass on — it honors none you wish to mourn — 
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise— 
I never knew but one, and here he lies!" 

Byron's Epitaph on his Newfoundland dog. 

Rev. Jno. Kewton, of England, long after being confirmed 
in the Christian faith, was personally engaged in the African 
Slave-trade, and from the influence of a single name, (as he says 
himself,) never doubted the justice and morality of this most 
inhuman traffic. Aristotle, in those days that made old sayings 
sacred, consigned to long suffering and hopeless misery a large 
portion of our fellow-mortals by a few words. " Black people," 
said he, " were intended by God to be slaves. Afi'icans are 
black — therefore intended to be slaves." And thus by a single 
syllogism was the poor African condemned to slavery, and a 
man of great mind and known piety seduced to the most atroci- 
ous and damning acts. A hollow-hearted sanctimony and 



294 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

puritanical tyranny grants nothing but by name, and by the 
arbitrary and partial favors of God claims not only the suprem- 
acy over all other creatures on earth, but the exclusive rights and 
enjoyments of heaven, and hence it is that it turns a deaf ear 
to the just claims and piteous cries of all other creatures. And 
upon this despotic and gratuitous assumption is the doctrine 
maintained that God has created the universe for the benefit 
of a few favorites, and neglecting his other creatures, administers 
alone to their luxurious and wanton craft. 

" What, man ! are there not enough of hunger, and disease, 

and fatigue, 
And yet must thy goad or thy thong add another sorrow to 

existence, 
What, art thou not content — thy sin hath dragged down 

suffering and death 
On the poor dumb servants of thy comfort, and yet must thou 

rack them with thy spite!" 
" The verdict of all things is unanimous finding their master 

cruel, 
The dog, thy humble friend, thy trusting honest friend, 
And all things that minister alike to thy life, and thy comfort, 

and thy pride, 
Testify with one sad voice that man is a cruel master. 
The dog cannot plead his own right, nor render a reason for 

exemption, 
Nor give a soft answer unto wrath to turn aside the undeserved 

lash. 
*' The galled ox cannot complain, nor supplicate a moment's 

respite. 
The spent horse hideth his distress till he panteth out his spirit 

at the goal. 
''Alas, in the winter of life, when worn by constant toil. 
If ingratitude forget his services, he cannot bring them to 

remembrance. 



INSTINCT. 295 

" Behold he is faint with hunger — the big tear standeth in his 

eye. 
" His skin is sore with stripes, and he tottereth beneath his 

burden. 
" His limbs are stiff with age, his sinews have lost their vigor, 
And pain is stamped upon his face, while he wrestleth unequally 

with his toil. 
" Yet once more — mutely and meekly endureth he the crush- 
ing blow, 
" That struggle hath crocked his heart-strings, and the generous 

brute is dead. 
" Liveth there no advocate for him, no judge to avenge his 

wrongs ? 
" No voice that shall be heard in his defence, no sentence to 

be passed. on his oppressor ? 
"Yea, the sad age of the tortured pleadeth piteously for him, 
" Yea, all the justice in heaven is roused in indignation at his 

woes. 
" Yea, all the pity upon earth shall call down a curse upon the 

cruel, 
"Yea, the burning malice of the wicked is then' own exceeding 

punishment. 
" The angel of mercy stoppeth not to comfort, but passeth by 

on the other side, 
" And hath no tear to shed when a cruel man is damned." 

1 so much love the sacred reason and the godly harmony 
of things in their own merit, that I regret to take up a single 
line with quotations, but knowing that most of readers are 
governed more by the authority of standard and pious writers 
than by solid argument, I have thus indulged, though to a 
very limited extent. If there be a God who feels for the suffer- 
ing of his unoffending and defenceless creatures, Tupper's ana- 
thema of those thieving and lordly heirs of heaven, who, not 
satisfied with pilfering their brother of every gift from above, 
deny to the poor brute the little allotted him, cannot be too 



296 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

severe. But why all this sensitive jealousy and intolerance 
against the brute and his defenders, when heaven, (or in less 
offensive language,) God's universe must be ample for the 
accommodation of all his creatures. But to soothe the haughty 
arrogance of those special claimants to heaven (for I like peace), 
I will suggest that there may be separate appartraents for the 
rich, the poor, the master and slave, the simple child of nature, 
and even the brute and every sensitive creature that God has 
made, and thus compromising the matter, I will give a few 
more facts in regard to the brute without intending offence 
to any. 

In proof of the immortality of the soul of man, we exult- 
ingly say to the materialist: Can matter feel, think, and act? 
And if this be a good argument for the spirituality of man, it 
is equally so for the brute, as no honest man will deny that 
they feel, think, and act. This is all granted, but then it is 
said to be instinct in the brute, as though a name would alter 
the facts. But in regard to this, we ask with all sincerity 
what is instinct but a power, principle, capacity, or property 
created by God, and if so, are not those creations of God equal 
to contingent creations or the creations of man ? For, if God 
be the infallible dictator or prompter of the brute in his thoughts 
and actions, must not their thoughts and actions be equal to 
the blind and fortuitous thoughts and actions of man ? Again, 
it is said in favor of man's superiority that the brutes act by 
an original implantment of perfection in their nature, called 
instinct, and that they consequently cannot sin or violate the 
will of God, while man is abandoned to his own innate cor- 
ruption, and to the guidance of evil spirits, and to the govern- 
ment of the devil himself, at all of which evil calamity and con- 
demnation God winks. This is the whole of the argument that 
has ever been given for the superiority of man over the brute, 
and of which superiority, God forbid, I should hold any claim, 
for it is a claim that the wicked man may hold as superior to 
the humble and obedient Christian. Who, I ask. but God. 



INSTINCT. 291 

makes the instinct and places it in the brute, and whether he acts 
in the brute by primary or by secondary causes, does not alter 
the case, for the brute must either have a self-creating and un- 
erring will of his own, or he must act by the will of God, and 
as a self-creating will is denied to the brute, we must fall back 
upon the immediate dictation of God himself — a condition for 
which I have ever prayed and to which end alone tends our 
Savior's prayer: Guard me from evil and lead me not into 
temptation. 

Now leaving the argument, for it appears to me to require 
none, I will give a few more interesting and confirmatory cases 
of rationality in brutes. But, then, what influence can it have 
with those religious opposers of the brute — because of the want 
of reason — when they condemn poor human reason in man in 
matters of faith as unequal to the mystery of things unseen, 
and consequently of no avail in the most weighty matters in- 
volving our interest and happiness both here and hereafter. 
We will, however, premise a few facts that now come up before 
the mind as important in fixing the foundation upon which the 
minds of men and brutes, in common with all things in creation, 
must rest. 

Brutes, like men, must act from a choice, desire or will 
to act ; and to act is to exist, for nothing can act without au 
existence, or when it is, and where it is. And that which 
has an existence must have existed from all eternity, connate 
with God himself, or have been brought into existence at some 
period and by some power, leaving but two alternatives — a self- 
creation, or a dependent creation. Now it will be seen that a 
thing, to bring itself into existence, must think, plan and act 
before itself had an existence — a proposition too absurd to ad- 
mit — which brings it back to God at last as the Designer, 
Creator and Preserver of all things, leaving nothing to the 
contingencies of either mind or matter. And now again it will 
be farther seen that, as God is wise, he has created nothing in 
vain, that all things are of equal importance in the 'eyes of 

13* 



MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

God, SO that no creature, even the most humble in creation, 
should be despised by us vain and invisible specks in his mighty 
Universe. And in fine, as God is loving and kind, we should 
not despise or cruelly mistreat any of his sensitive creatures, as 
in so doing we prove traitorous to God and ungrateful for his 
goodness to ourselves. 

" No flocks that range the ralley free 
To slaughter I condemn — 
Taught by that power that pities me, 
I learn to pity them." 

That brutes, in common with man, have sensibility to plea- 
sure and pain, and that they perceive, think and act, has been 
amply proven, and it only remains to be shown from their 
habits of thought and action, to what extent those powers are 
possessed. It cannot be contended that there are different 
qualities or grades in the essence of the soul without destroying 
the teachings of Holy writ and giving to the unworthy great 
^superiority over the more humble and pious minds ; nor can it be 
rational and just to say that our claims to a future existence de- 
pend upon the extent or acuteness of our rational powers, for 
that would be to consign to death and oblivion a large portion of 
human souls. Now, that brutes reason, no one acquainted with 
their varied actions, can doubt, but whether just enough or not 
quite enough, to save their minds from the grossness of matter 
that must perish with the body, I cannot, according to that con- 
temptible and sacrilegious standard of gradation, say. If those 
haughty monopolists of all God's favors, had seen the feastings 
and heard the exultations of the wolves after one of Napoleon's 
battles in Russia — claiming as they did, the special favor of 
God, who had sent those rebellious human outlaws to their 
very doors to butcher each other for their benefit — they would 
find that other beings had been favored of God as much, or 
more, than themselves, and that their boasted tenure in the 
supreme and eternal courts of equity must be questionable. 

Behold, cries man, all things created for my use ; 
Behold them all for mine, replies the pampered goose." 



INSTINCT. 299 

But to show that brutes think, feel and act, we will begin 
with the well-known case of the elephant who, when passing 
down a certain street to water, thrust his snout into a tailor's 
window where there was an apple on the bench, when the 
tailor pricked his snout with his needle. And now, by way of 
revenge, the elephant filled his proboscis with muddy water, 
and on his return spouted over the tailor and the royal suit he 
was making. It is well known that when tame elephants are 
sent out to decoy wild ones over false causeways, that those 
who escape the pit-fall, rush at their treacherous leader, and if 
they catch him, beat him to death — showing precisely the same 
train of reasoning and feeling of revenge that belongs to 
human beings. Nor is their revenge more remarkable than 
their kindness and gratitude. The children of their keepers 
are frequently placed under their care, when no tiger or other 
beast dare approach. If the child should crawl too far out, 
it is tenderly drawn back under its ponderous frame ; nor has 
there ever been an instance known of their stepping upon their 
delicate charge. All animals change habits very rationally, 
according to the necessities of the case. The same animal 
that will lay up food where it comes but once a year with hard 
winters, will neglect it where food is plenty all the year, prov- 
ing beyond the possibility of doubt that they perceive the facts, 
draw conclusions, and act upon the premises just as rationally 
as we do. The ostrich in the colder climates will set upon its 
eggs, but where the sand is warm enough to relieve it of this 
duty, the eggs are left to the warmth of the sand. Bees, where 
there are flowers all the year, make no honey, except a little 
for their young. Captain Cook mentions islands where the 
birds and beasts, fearing nothing from man, on first acquaint- 
ance were as gentle as domestic animals — the foxes running 
about their feet, and the birds lighting upon their heads and 
shoulders. But they soon learned, by a few shots made 
amongst them, that man was their enemy, and consequently 
kept out of his way. I have seen squirrels in their native 



300 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

woods that I could take in my hands, and upon one occasion I 
saw near the base of th«e Rocky Mountains a drove of turkeys, 
so gentle that we walked up to them, and shot a number, 
when they began to learn the danger, and took both to their 
legs and wings. Cowper, the poet, puts this language into the 
mouth of Alexander Selkirk, the Solitaire of Juan Fernandez. 

"The beasts that roam over the plain 
My form with indiiference see, 
They are so unacquainted with man, 
Their tameness is shocking to me." 

Crows of experience know as well as a man the diflference be- 
tween a gun and a stick, and this knowledge is certainly ac- 
quired by observation. I once obtained a bird of the Crane 
family from a Menagerie — that had been taught to dance to 
music, and to do almost everything that man can — but speak. 
He was very large, with white body, black wings, and red top- 
knot. Call Jake — for that was his Christian name — from any 
audible distance, and he would come as fast as legs and wings 
could bring him. And no pantomimic performance could ex- 
press feeling more graphically than he did in his actions. He 
acquired knowledge to a certain extent, with as much facility 
as a human. I saw Jake, upon one occasion, looking at the 
young ladies^ picking flowers and laying them in bunches to 
make bouquets, and when they left the garden he went to work. 
He plucked a number of bunches and laid them along carefully 
as they had done. He was in the habit of noticing the servants 
running the knife in the ground and taking up asparagus, till 
he himself, took to running his long, sharp bill into the earth, 
and clipping the stems, took it up as fast as they could — and 
became so troublesome that we were compelled to cover the beds 
with brush. When preparing for fishing, he would evince as 
much anxiety and pleasure as a dog will do when his master is 
preparing for the hunt, and walking side by side with the fish- 
ermen to the water, would claim all the small fish taken out. 
He was not like the " whole hog" politician, who swallows his 
whole hog, tail foremost, bristles and all; but with more good 



INSTINCT. 301 

sense, took his jQsli carefully by the head, and if dirty from 
flouncing in the sand, washed it carefully before he swallowed it- 
I was told that he had been seen to wipe his fish upon the 
grass which grew green and thick around the pond; so, to test 
the fact, I intentionally threw a fish to him — covered with dirt — 
which he picked up and aimed at the water, but I had him in- 
tercepted at every turn, till pausing for a moment, as in rational 
contemplation, he stepped off to the grass, and wiped a side at 
a time — occasionally holding it up and eying it as carefully as 
any human could do. If this was not thought and reasoning 
to suit the necessity of the case, we cannot infer what means 
to ends intend. Jake, by the bye, was a very sprightly and 
amusing fellow, not only for his fancy dances, but his many 
pantomimic actings, and such was his flow of fun, that he often 
hazarded his life with the washer-women, whose blueing bag he 
frequently stole from under the rocks where they would try to 
hide it from him, and dashing along the shore out of the way of 
their missiles, he would shake it in the water till all around 
was colored by it, and then look at the result and at the women 
most amusingly, and set up a chuckling, that a person who did 
not see him, would take to be a laughter. I made him a guard 
over my fruit trees, which the little boys of the town frequently 
troubled, and it was truly amusing to see what chases Jake had 
after them. Pretending to run his best to catch them, he would 
keep close to their heels with his mouth wide open, till they 
would jump the fence or clear the gates, when Jake would 
throw his head up with loud laughter and strut back to his post. 
These little incidents I name to show that other animals as well 
as man, have intellect enough both to think and act. 

I have seen a dog in scuffling for his food, snatch up a bone 
and run behind some hillock or hiding spot, and scratching into 
the ground with all possible haste and burying it, return to take 
a share of the common mess. Yes, and when all was over I have 
witnessed him take a circuitous route back to the hidden trea- 
sure, and smelling all over it, scratch additional earth upon it, 



302 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and smell, and smell again, until he was satisfied that it was 
secure from discovery. Men in their thievings are not always 
so rational or successful in their hiding. It is well known that 
monkies will form a long line and put out regular guards, 
for entering and robbing orchards, and some will get on the 
trees to throw down the fruit, while others gather it up and 
pass it along the line. They have a watchword well known to 
themselves, and, in fact, every animal has its means of making 
its alarm or distress known to its companions. I am so well 
acquainted with the habits of wild turkies that I can, by fraudu- 
lently imitating their social notes, call them up at pleasure, 
when hunting in the wild forest, nor are men themselves 
exempt from the delusions and tricks of hypocritical and 
treacherous counterfeits. I have several times witnessed what 
is called the charming of birds by snakes, and I can tell by the 
cry of those little creatures in the forest what is going on, and 
I am satisfied from close observation that it is nothing but 
dread alarm that causes the timid bird to become paralyzed and 
to fall at the open mouth and glaring eyes of the serpent. Upon 
their discovery of their enemy, they send out their notes of 
alarm, when large numbers of birds collect, when flying around 
with great agitation, till getting closer and closer, they fall at 
the mouth of the monster. 

Children have been scared to death in their cradles, and 
grown up persons upon their feet — so it is not surprising that 
the little timid bird should flutter out its last breath at the 
mouth of so dreadful and appalling a monster. Persons as well 
as horses have been known to stand and be burnt up in their 
rooms under the paralyzing power of terror, when with presence 
of mind and firmness of resolution they might have escaped. 
Many have under a kind of horrible temptation thrown them- 
selves from dismal and giddy heights, and Byron relates the fact 
that in approaching the fearful brink of a towering crag upon 
the Alps, he drew back with trembling horror at his own feel- 
ing of wanton destruction that came over him. 



INSTINCT. 303 

This I have felt -myself, when poised as a speck in mid- 
heaven, far above the thunder's cloud and looking down upon 
the lightnings at fearful depths beneath me. 

I well recollect, when a boy, of approaching an object that 
almost scared me to death, and putting my hand tremblingly 
upon it, for I had no power to escape. The threatening voice, 
the flashing eye and infuriate manner of one man will frequently 
strike terror to the hearts of others, and this is the secret of 
the mental control obtained over the most furious wild animals. 
The influence of fear, and the power of mind over mind, I give 
as a proof that the passions and emotions of men and brutes 
are identically the same, and that their minds are governed by 
like causes. 

Cats, when they beg for a crumb round the table, will first 
put their paw gently upon your knee, and if not noticed, they 
claw just enough to make you feel, and when sporting with 
children, they will both bite and scratch with most skillful glee, 
but never to hurt or make a child cry. No human could under 
the circumstances reason more correctly, and children rarely 
act with as much tolerance and good feeling towards each 
other. 

My servants had a young dog that played daily with the 
children in the yard, but had not been noticed about the 
house. The children being confined to the house one day, 
Reuben, as they called him, came dashing and frisking into the 
house amongst the children, falling down on the carpet, rolling 
over and over, jumping up and running out with a marked grin 
upon his face, all of which social feelings gave to poor Reuben 
a crazed appearance, so much so, that the cry of " mad dog 1" 
ran through the house, producing great consternation. The 
children were locked up, and I was sent for to shoot the crazy 
beast. One of my men, knowing Reuben's habits and inferring 
his object, begged for him, assuring me that he had been daily 
in the habit of wrestling and tumbling over the grass with the 
children, and having got lonesome by the absence of his com- 



304 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

panions, it was his way, and as he could not speak — the only way 
of coaxing them out. This I found to be true, and often after- 
wards witnessed as much kind and social feeling in Reuben's 
sport with the children as any human being could possibly 
evince from a pure and unsophisticated heart. 

Who but a brutal and God-deserted bigot could cruelly 
mistreat or deny a mind to so humble and kind a creature ? 
Parents and children, pledged friends, prelates and professing 
Christians break their tender and sacred ties in deserting each 
other under great panics, such as plague, cholera and other 
calamitous trials, but this faithful (what, dog or angel, surely 
God-like) spirit would have died in defence of his little com- 
panions. But they call him a dog, and be it so. There are 
but few pastors who have the same kind and watchful care 
over their flocks that the shepherd-dog has aver his, and those 
who have read to any purpose, cannot but know that the St. 
Bernard and New Foundland dogs will hazard their own lives 
in rescuing from death those fiends in human form who enviously 
and unfeelingly deny to them a soul, and instead of returning 
a gratitude, condemn every effort of their faithful and affection- 
ate zeal to a brute instinct, as if God was not the author and 
the prompter of every act of instinct, for otherwise the brute 
would be the Creator and donor of his own nature. 

A pedlar was murdered in the mountains of Kentucky, and 
his body never found till more than twelve months had elapsed, 
when a party of my friends were hunting, and near the camp 
they found a beaten path leading to a deep sink into which 
they searched through logs and leaves, and there found the 
remains of the murdered man. They then followed the path 
which lead to a large fallen tree under which the faithful watch- 
dog was found, starved and worn down by distress, for food 
had become so scarce in the forest, it was hard to obtain. 
This dog might have taken the road to a settlement, but a 
glimmering of reason rested upon the poor fellow's mind that 
his master was there, and he preferred death to desertion. 



INSTINCT. 805 

"Now, if these dogs exercised their own will, they certainly are 
entitled to mind and moral merit, and if they have neither 
minds nor wills of their own, it follows as an axiom that God\s 
will must act within them ; and as the will of God is to be 
honored and adored, the works of his faithful creatures express- 
ing his will, should be treated with kindness and respect. 

Here, again, I must remind the reader that as there is but 
one God and Creator of all things, that the dog did not create 
himself, and that he is a much more obedient subject of God 
than traitorous and cruel man with all his vain boastings. We 
Christians, however, as we term ourselves, found our prejudices 
upon the presumption of many separately creating and warring 
Gods, thus rendering ourselves more inconsistent and ridiculous 
than the devotees of the Oriental God, Boodh, whom more 
than one third of the human family worships, and grant that 
everything came from Boodh, and that every thing must re- 
turn to him. And this, by the bye, with a change only of 
name, is the sacred truth of the one uuderived, unequalled, im- 
mutable and eternal God, the great designer, creator and 
governor of 1;he Universe, who numbers the hairs upon our 
heads, and suffers not a sparrow to fall to the ground without 
his notice. It is in him we live, move and have our being, and 
from him in common with man, does the brute derive his exist- 
ence, his every thought and every act. So think not that the 
brute has a separate God, a separate government or a separate 
merit in the eyes of that God who in his wisdom and goodness 
did create him, and may allot to him a future happiness for all 
his miseries. 

I could give a thousand instances of sagacious thought and 
sound reasoning derived from age, observation and experience, 
that have fallen under my own notice, but I will only mention 
a few of them, such as the notorious marauding old town-hogs, 
who, by stealthy steps and covert ways, enter lots, and getting 
to the slop-tubs, evince as much sagacity in their movements 
as man would under the same circumstances. When young, and 



306 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

before being taught better, they will boldly go where they can, 
and like children grasp at everything their appetites may crave, 
but soon, by punishment, they are taught to withhold, and then 
it is that, like the human, they take to stealing. They will lie 
around till a late hour, till lights are out and all asleep, and 
then enter, eat, and be off before day. I have known depreda- 
tions carried on in cornfields and elsewhere, with magic skill 
far exceeding the success of our flibustering and hungry hogs 
who have entered and aimed to rob others of their rights. I 
have seen foxes run along logs, through fallen treetops, and 
through tangled places to bewilder the dogs, but old and ex- 
perienced hounds will not stop when they loose the track at 
such places, but take a circle round and find where it again 
comes out upon the ground. Every huntsman knows that when 
the pack is bothered about a track, that the older dogs pay no 
more attention to the cry of the young ones than old people do 
to the idle prattle of young and unexperienced children, but 
just let an old leader open, and the whole pack rallies to the 
unerring trail. Let a dog once follow a rabbit through a gap 
in a hedge, and if he start one after that and looses the track, 
he with quick thought of his past experience will dash to the 
gap and head him. Every huntsman is aware of the fact that 
a young deer will run around the stands till shot, while an old 
one will run directly out and continue their flight to a distance, 
and into the most inaccessible places. An old stag, having 
been much chased, will double his track, or in other words, 
take a circuit, and falling in upon his back-track, follow it some 
distance, and then bound off as far as possible in a lateral 
direction. But an old pack is not to be fooled much by such 
tricks, for they divide their forces, one half running on either 
side of the track to detect the tangent. Experienced deer, when 
hard pushed, will seek some water-course, and instead of cross- 
ing directly over or going up stream, which would constantly 
float the scent down to their pursuers, they invariably keep as 
near the centre of the stream as they can, and invariably travel 



i 



INSTINCT. 301 

down it. Experienced hounds, however, reason well to the 
point in such cases, so they, as quickly as could the general 
of an army, divide their forces, a portion crossing the stream, 
and thus guarding both shores, pursue downwards (never up), 
and if, after running a distance, no track is found to come out, 
knowing from time and speed that they must have got ahead, 
they commence to search back, swimming or wading in, as the 
case may be, amongst rocks, drift, or hiding nooks. 

Deer will sink themselves so deep in the water that nothing 
but the nose protrudes — sufficiently to breathe above it, and in 
this position I have seen them under the rocks that have fallen 
from th« cliffs and choked the beds both of Rockcastle and 
Cumberland rivers, where I had many years enjoyed the chase 
and the healthful sports of the forest. And long will I remem- 
ber the sportful days and mirthful nights I have spent with my 
friends of " Boone-Camp.'' 

To show farther the sagacity of the horse, I will mention a 
circumstance of my own horse, that just now occurs to my 
mind. I rode him for some time through country-gates, till he 
learned to open them as well as I could, by pressing his nose 
through the slats and lifting the latch, then by shoving with 
his head, carry the heaviest gate before him. If the staves 
were too close for his nose, he used his tongue, and such became 
his skill that it was hard to secure a gate against him, and not 
five minutes since I found him in my garden, not only having 
lifted the latch but pulled a peg out, which I had put over it, 
with his teeth; and more than this, he can lay down "a pair of 
bars as quickly with his mouth, as a man can with his hand. 
If a horse itches in a part which he cannot scratch, he will 
bite another horse in the same spot, when his companion quickly 
reciprocates it, and relieves him of the itching. Even the goose 
has its share of intellect and of reasoning power. A species 
of goose, called the Cormorant, that inhabits the lakes of Mis- 
sissippi and Louisiana, fishes with as much sagacity as could a 
human. I have seen them collect in large flocks and spreading 



308 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

out like the wings of a net or sein, near the shore or some 
shallow bar, and when properly marshalled, they of a sudden 
commence beating the water with their wings and closing up 
to the bar where the hemmed up fish splash the water as much 
as the Cormorants, who now commence the busy feast. These 
birds, if you come near them with a gun, will expell the air 
from their bodies and sink so deep in the water that there is 
nothing but the bill to be seen. Those facts, and many more 
equally curious, in regard to the Cormorant, are daily wit- 
nessed by Southern planters. 

There are little birds in our Western forests that will, when 
they see the robbers of their nests approaching, tumble at their 
feet, as though they had been wounded, and fluttering over and 
over, just a-head of their grasp, lead them to a distance, and 
then take flight — ^no doubt — laughing at the credulity of the 
cruel and disappointed thief. I have often, before I knew the 
sacred rights of God's humble creatures, been lead off in this 
way, from my barbarous designs, by this stratagem of the 
tender and affectionate mother, whose prompt and efficient 
reasoning thus saved her little brood from threatened destruc- 
tion. The wood-duck, that hatches in the top's of trees, will 
take one at a time of her young upon her back between her 
wings, and fly to the water with them. I have often, when a 
thoughtless little marauder, lay snugly hid on the bank of a 
river, till the old duck would bring from a tree on the moun- 
tain side her entire brood of ten or fifteen beautiful little crea- 
tures, then plunging in, swim after them, producing great con- 
sternation, and I now look back with wonder and admiration 
at the quick-witted sagacity of the mother in protecting her 
nimble little flock, sometimes taking to the land and hiding in 
the brush, then down the bank and into the water again, as 
best fitted the case. 

In avoiding to make this article tedious, I will close it by 
making a few remarks upon the philosophy of mind. It having 
been amply shown that the spiritual thinker is one and the 



INSTINCT. 309 

same in man and beast, and differing only in degree, as a dime 
differs from a dollar, yet of the same substance, it only remains 
to show wherein and to what extent they differ in power and 
in modes of action. The body of the brute comes to maturity 
much sooner than that of man, which cannot be a just objec- 
tion, for his organic powers, his endurance of hardships, and 
his exemption from disease, certainly make him physically 
superior to man, nor can the quick development of his mind, 
in the brute, degrade it in rank any more than it can the body. 
The mind of the brute acts in accordance with the laws a,nd 
requirements of his nature, and that of man can do no more. 
All that can justly be said in contrast, is that though they 
both have instincts and both have reason, that the mind of 
man is governed more by reason and less by instinct than that 
of the brute. It will be seen in the first part of this article 
that everything is there proven to be instinct, but in respect to 
antiquated and vulgar distinctions, I here without a difference 
speak of reason in contradistinction to instinct, as, though quick 
perception and infallible adaptation of means to ends, as seen 
in the workings of the mind of the brute, were unreasonable. 

The human infant, for instance, is governed by the same 
organic laws that the young of the brute is. It is as natural 
for the infant to suck as it is to be an infant, and it is just as 
natural that some thirty pairs of muscles should be put in 
synchronous and peristaltic motion by desire in the act of suck- 
ing and deglutition, as that our legs, by numerous muscular 
concatenations, should be put in motion by a more adult and 
conscious desire. Inanition and plenitude, each produce their 
appropriate feelings, and put in action their allotted train of 
muscles. An empty stomach begets pain, and pain crying, 
which exercises a set of muscles, that distorts the face, while a 
desire to reheve this pain begets sucking, and now another set 
of muscles are brought into harmonious concert, forming a 
vacuum beyond all the powers of art, drawing the milk from 
the mother's breast, when, as I said, the deglutitory muscles 



310 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

receive the nectared fluid, and by a vermicular movement con- 
duct it to the gastric reservoir, the great chemical laboratory 
of the human system, where it is prepared to be absorbed, cir- 
culated, secreted, and avssimilated to the ten' thousand pur- 
poses of fluids, and solids of the moving miracle. When the 
stomach is filled and the cravings of nature satisfied, the 
wearied sucking muscles relax into placidity, and the antagonal 
muscles of the mouth gently drawing the corners back, produce 
the appearance of a sweet smile of the infant's face, pleasing to 
the feelings of the ever tender and watchful mother. These 
marvellous and unconscious movements of the infant as clearly 
evince the handi-work of God, his wisdom, and his might, as 
if he were to appear in person to confirm the fact, and I record 
it here not as properly belonging to the article on Instinct, but 
as legitimately belonging to the history of our race, and to 
show the existence of a Designer, who has, by preconceived 
design and consummate skill adapted means to ends. The in- 
fant was made to suck, and call it instinct or what you please, 
its science is as perfect at birth as any after-experience could 
make it. God in such cases being the instructor, for without 
his unbounded wisdom and kindly will such miracles could not 
exist. 

Much wonder has been expressed, and interminable disputes 
gotten up, how it is that a calf and a duck, for instance, com- 
ing into the world upon the water's side, should act so differ- 
ently, the calf remaining on land and sucking, while the duck 
runs directly into the water and swims. The only answer to 
such silly question is simply this : — the calf was made to suck 
and live on land, and the duck to go into the water. God has 
endowed the infant calf with odorific powers to smell the milk, 
and with an appetite or propensity to suck it, while the duck 
is made with a bill not to suck, but to seek its appropriate 
food, and has given it a propensity for water in which it was 
designed to live. These you may call instincts or ultimate de- 
signs, which are the same, and we might as well ask why the 



INSTINCT. 311 

duck has feathers and a webb foot, and the calf hair and a 
cloven foot as to ask why the duck goes into water, and 
the calf remains on land? both acting in accordance with their 
unavoidable organism. Why should old and young dislike the 
taste of gall, and be pleased with that of sugar, other than 
that this is the order of nature, and just as simple is every 
other sensation, desire and emotion of soul unencumbered by 
mysticism, vulgar prejudices, and the quibbles of pretended 
learning. The wonderful discovery of Galen that has figured 
through many volumes of mental philosophy, is of this kind. 
After placing milk, oil and hay and other temptations round a 
room, he took a kidd from its dead mother, and setting it down 
in the room it sme^: around at the various kinds of food, and 
then selected the milk. Now, the great question based upon 
this undoubted fact, is : Why did the kidd take the milk in pre- 
ference to the hay ? Some contend that it was led by instinct, 
and others that it was governed by a kind of human reason, 
when common sense would decide it to be nothing more than 
its natural taste and aptitude given it by its Creator, and this 
taste is not a bit more wonderful than that the kidd should 
come out a kidd instead of a colt. Nor is all this more mar- 
vellous than that the human infant should have a propensity 
to suck milk instead of eating meat. Galen's murder of the 
poor mother was to prove that the offspring received no in- 
struction from the parent, and that it had gained nothing from 
observation or experience, showing as he and his disciples have 
supposed, that there is nothing in the brute but instinct, which 
facts, when justly applied, fit the young human just as well as 
the young brute. It is equally marvellous that the needle 
should turn to the pole, that vinegar should taste sour, and 
sugar sweet, that fire should burn and cold freeze, the scent 
of a rose agreeable, and that of a skunk disagreeable. The 
dog will leave a bed of roses for a rotten carcass by the 
same law of his nature that the kidd left the hay and the 
oil for the milk. These are ultimate facts for which no reason 



312 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

can be given, further than that they are so, because they are 
so. In other words, they are so, because God made them so, 
and the only question left for dispute is why did God make 
them so ? There is a conservative power or law of self-pre- 
servation so interwoven into the very texture of our constitu- 
tion, that it acts without either our knowledge or approbation. 
If we stumble, or in any way lose our balance, it rights us 
up before we could reason or will it so. If a blow be aimed at 
us, though we know it to be in sport, and even will not to 
flinch from it, this vis naturae, the sleepless life-guard that 
watches disease at every pore and inlet of the body, causes the 
eye to wink, and the body to shrink from it ; and the prick of 
a pin, even when asleep, will cause the hanc4^to recoil from the 
threatened danger. All this must be granted to be purely in- 
stinctive, and yet it is not more so than the inborn capacity 
that enables us from experience to act with deliberation under 
anticipated results, for without such original or instinctive 
power, the basis of every thought and emotion, we could not 
thus act. 

In short, I am wearied with arguing this question which 
continually resolves itself into the one simple fact, that as there 
is but one God, the Creator and Donor of all things, that all 
things are instinct, or in other words dependent npon God, and 
if so, why so many distinctions and so much controversy about 
whence the many powers, properties and learned technicalities 
spoken of by authors. There must either be a plurality of in- 
termediate Gods, as of the Greeks and Romans, that work at 
random and without a dependent connection with the immut- 
able and eternal laws of causality, or these many distinctions 
are brain-begotten and thingless things, independent of a cause, 
and without an archetype in nature. The unobscured pheno- 
mena of mind is just as plain as that of matter. The germ of 
mind may be likened unto that of the varied phenomena of the 
material world in regard to its dependence upon fixed and un- 
alterable principles. There are no marks of reason to be seen 



INSTINCT. 313 

in the new-born infant, nor is there any tree to be seen in the 
acorn, yet there is an instinctive or congenital principle or 
power there implanted by God himself, which will, under the 
influence of preconceived and designated agencies, produce the 
mighty oak with all its spreading branches, leaves and fruit. 
Its roots are instinctively grounded in primogenial or first 
causes, and its every stage of subsequent development is 
equally dependent upon causes created and sustained by the 
same power and not by the casualities or whims of nature. A 
miracle, with a thousand complicated, harmonious, and inscrut- 
able parts, is developed, by incubation, from the egg, whereby 
with all the scrutiny of man, there can be nothing found. And 
just so with the infant, both in mind and body — the body hav- 
ing but a spark of instinctive vitality that would die out as 
quickly without food and air from the external world, as a 
spark of fire would without fuel. Nor is the mind less depend- 
ent, for it comes to the world like the acorn, with an instinct- 
ive capncity to develope the phenomena of mind by time, and 
the objective influences through the senses. All things, then, 
are equally dependent upon the fixed laws of the first great 
cause, it follows that neither brute nor man has any self-control 
or independent and fortuitous powers, but that they are both 
governed by the instinctive laws of their nature which differs 
nothing in quality, as the souls of the various grades of men 
and beasts cannot be big and little, black or white, or of finer 
or of grosser materials, but difi*er only in the organization and 
the nervous distributions that afford the inlets to mind. If 
there be a principle of immateriality and immortality that 
feels, thinks and acts, it must be one and the same in every 
creature that feels, thinks and acts, for soul must be soul, and 
matter matter, wherever they may be found. There certainly 
is a greater difference between the different powers of mind in 
different men than there is between men and beasts, and it 
cannot be that God will make any distinction in favoritism or 
in the day of judgment, because of those differences. The dif- 



314 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ference, I have said, does not depend upon the essence of mind, 
but upon our organization, and the inlets of mind ; and the 
brute, being deprived of hands to feel, which is the corrective 
of all our other senses, it is not supposed that he can obtain 
the same amount of knowledge, though possessed of identically 
the same amount of mind. A deaf man, for instance, 
cannot speak, and a blind man is cut off from all that develop- 
ment of mind that is created by the powers of vision. Memory 
is frequently destroyed by the derangement of the nerves, or 
by a stroke upon the head, while the entire mind is stupified or 
crazed by disease. If then, the same mind that is wise to-day, 
should become demented to-morrow by a change of physical 
condition, may not the greatest mind be checked in its develop- 
ment by an original organization or contingent condition of 
system ? 

In regard to a greater or less perfection in the different 
modes of mental action in man or beast, the beast has the 
advantage in some and man in others. Memory, for instance, 
is the most wonderful power we have, and the beast notoriously 
has it in a higher degree than man. Reason they have in a 
less degree, but in quickness of perception and correctness of 
judgment in all practical things, appertaining to, or necessary 
for their self-preservation, health, and happiness, they are 
assuredly our superiors. It has been objected, however, to the 
brute, that though they are our superiors in practical wisdom, 
they lack that quality of mind that fits them for abstract and 
idle speculations, such as we possess. In proof of the position 
I have assumed, that the essence of mind must be the same in 
all grades of actions in minds, I ask the question whether it is 
possible the mind can be enlarged by artificial means? "We 
speak of the mind being enlarged by education, but is it, or not, 
I further ask, really enlarged thereby? For if so, the soul of 
the profligate wit and educated man must claim the merit of 
a big soul over the more humble, uneducated, and pious 
Christian. 



1 



INSTINCT. 315 

Though I have run hastily, and with many interruptions 
through this article, I do not recollect of any thing more to be 
noticed, except a few words upon the apparent prescience pos- 
sessed by certain beasts — but more particularly by migrating 
birds. The tendency of every animal is from their organization, 
and hence it is that some animals more than others, exhibit 
those tendencies from their birth, while others, like the veget- 
able kingdom, are slower in the development of their nature. 
Some are created with acute sensibilities to changes in the 
elements, and that best befits them for the life they are designed 
to live. For instance, a duck and a- fish seek the water, be- 
cause best suited to their nature, while chickens remain on land, 
and birds fly in the air. If blind and cold, we could tell by our 
dull sensibilities which side of us a fire might be on, and feel an 
instinctive propensity to approach it, and so I presume it to be 
with migratory birds, whose exquisite sensibilities enable them 
at certain seasons and under chilling changes of atmosphere, to 
feel it more agreeable to go to the warm South than to go to the 
cold North. God has so constituted birds — a hen for instance 
— that after she lays her eggs she is taken with a feverish state 
of body and greatly increased heat, so much so as to be detected 
by the mercury. She now feels sick and torpid, as seen by her 
pale gills and demure countenance, and doubtless feels more 
pleasure in sitting in her nest, and upon her eggs, than off and 
exercising. God, doubtless, implanted this principle in all birds 
for the purpose of propagating their species, just as he has made 
the brute female to be afflicted with inflammation to bring them 
into season for the purposes of procreation, and these you may 
call instincts, or what you please, but they are nothing more nor 
less than the unavoidable nature of the animal. The exquisite 
sensibilities of a dog will give some idea of those otherwise in- 
scrutable and wonderful proclivities of brutes. The dog will 
not only smell the difference of man and other animals through 
the thickest soled shoe, but tell his master from all others, and 
though he may be in company with thousands of persons, and 



316 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

leaves them, the dog will unerringly select him out, and follow 
his track. Birds may have similar sensibilities; and as the sun 
in a northern climate, being always south to the eye, as well 
as by warmth of feehng, it is quite natural that both birds and 
beasts, should, at certain seasons, journey in that direction. 
The human is frequently so sensitive as to anticipate the weather 
by their pains, or other indiscribable feelings. We thirst and 
hunger we know not how, but find that water and food will 
give us relief. Under certain conditions of system we itch in- 
tolerably — the philosophy of which we are ignorant of — but find 
that scratching soothes it, A woman in certain circumstances 
will long for things unnatural to others, and unthought of by 
herself under other conditions of system. All these are in- 
stincts of our nature, and are as fatally governed by their ap- 
propriate causes as the magnetic needle is when it turns to the 
pole. I have but one more remark to make, and that is to 
show how far our prejudices will go to degrade the highest 
qualifications and most desirable gifts of God. 

We first stigmatize the brute as a degraded animal by our 
own arbitrary prejudices, as did Aristotle the poor African, and 
next condemn every quality they possess as equally degraded, 
when, if we possessed many of their wonderful faculties of in- 
tuitive perfection, and prescience, we should boast of them. 
Suppose, for instance, that any man on earth had the memory 
of a horse— the shrewdness of the fox — the mathematical 
knowledge of the bee — the supernatural wisdom and unerring 
skill of navigation possessed by the carrier-dove to cross vast 
continents and stormy seas back to its home, without a com- 
pass, and an eye to see as well at night as in the day, and a 
power to know all tracks, and to follow the rogue and murderer 
to his covert places, I ask in common honesty and with Christ- 
ian charity whether he would not be adored as the most God- 
gifted man that the world has ever known. These are the 
brightest gems of an immortal mind, and because God, our 
common Father, has seen proper to bestow them upon others of 



INSTINCT. 311 

his creatures, man with supercilious arrogance rebels against his 
will and holds it in contempt. 

This selfish and sacrilegious claim we make to mind, not 
only over the brute, but against our fellow-man, is the lowest 
and most degrading trait in our character, and never to be 
found in the elevated, enlarged, and liberal soul, whose knowl- 
edge is not from the contemptible and contracted prejudices of 
man, but from the harmonious immutable and eternal laws of 
God's vast universe. This is the source, and the only source of 
disinterested, refined, and enobling knowledge, that can never 
be gained from the debased and grovelling squabblings about 
the isms and dogmatisms in our church conventionalities. This 
vain and bigoted appropriation of God's favors to our poor 
little selves is a hopeless delusion, that never has nor will be 
realized in the winding up of all things, for all things of time 
must have their end in the levelling and fated stroke of death. 
The Jews professed to be a favored people, who claimed the 
world under the plighted gifts of God, and with most irrever- 
ent presumption did they, in the person of Moses, accuse the 
Lord, face to face, of falsehood. 

"And Moses returned to the Lord, and said. Lord where- 
fore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it that 
thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in 
thy name, he hath done evil unto this people, neither hast thou 
delivered thy people at all. 

*' And Jehovah said unto Moses, I have seen this people, 
and behold, it is a stiff-necked people: Now, therefore, let me 
alone, that my wrath my wax hot against them, that I may 
consume them." — Exodus v, 22, 23. 

Where now, I ask, were the favors of God to this vaunting 
nation, who went forth lying, stealing, butchering men, women, 
and infants, and even unhoofing and cruelly torturing the poor 
horse, in the name of (rod. God did justly consume them, 
and it would be well for our vain pretenders, and boastful heirs 



318 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRATE. 

of heaven to read a moral in those past and crushing dispensa- 
tions of Ahiiightj God. 

There is no feeUng even among Christian professors for the 
hmnble brute or his defender, and but little for the poor African 
whose patient toil under a galling yoke ministers to their 
wanton and pampered appetites and fancies. All past history 
shows that those claims to partial and favored rights have been 
but the braggart's boast, and that blind selfishness and bigoted 
zeal make us the ready tools of injustice, cruelty and oppression. 
Men, when seduced by those vain delusions, and debased by 
superstition, lose all feeling even for their own race; a proof 
of which is seen in the ruthless rapine and desolating sword of 
Mahomet, nor is this more than a mere item in the melancholy 
history of man, which should open the eyes of those usurpers 
of heaven's rights and spoilers of earth, to their own blind 
folly. 

In closing this article, it comes to my recollection that I 
might have quoted Dr. Adam Clarke, as well as other able Di- 
vines, in support of my opinion, that the mind of the brute is not 
matter, but a spirit, which feels, thinks and acts, and that it will 
have alloted to it by its kind Creator a future and happy abode 
in the realms of eternity, to compensate for its faithful toil and 
patient afflictions in this life. And now, may God in his mercy, 
forgive the oppressor, heal the afflicted, and save us all. 



i 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 



Having recently heard so much from the Clergy, in regard 
to the general want of zeal in religious matters, and of the 
evident decline of the cause, owing, as they suppose, to too 
much liberty of thought, and of the too much exercise of '^ poor 
human rmsonj'^ I feel it not only a moral obligation, but a 
religious duty to give to the pubUc my views upon this all im- 
portant subject. I am not a Divine, nor do I make any pre- 
tentions to the prophetic and mystic learning of that privileged 
body; but I trust I am a Christian, basing my hopes upon the 
plain and common sense, nature and reason of things, as made 
known by God, both in his natural and revealed will. I admit 
the fact, that there is too little piety and show of good works, 
for the amount of profession amongst us; for if you question 
the masses: are you believers in the Christian religion, and do 
you place your hopes for future happiness upon it ? and all may 
answer yes; and yet how few pious Christians and strictly 
honest or honorable men are to be found amongst them, and 
why this state of things in an enlightened age and in a Chris- 
tian land ? It is not for the want of clergy or of churches, nor 
for the want of liberality in the support of them, for the pockets 
of the people have been depleted to a sullen stupor and languid 
indifference amongst the members themselves. We shall soon 
vie with ancient and papal splendor in churches and in rival 
paraphernalia. If the defect, then, is not in the want of the 
profession of religion, nor in the willingness to support its insti- 
tutions, where is it ? Some charge it to the counter-excitement 
of self-interest, some to public amusements, and others to the 
all-absorbiug interest of popular favor, in seeking public honors. 

319 



320 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Then, again, they all join in one hue, and cry against "_poor 
human reason,^^ as the leader of evils, none of which opinions, in 
the nafure of things, can be correct. For the only object of 
man's existence in this world, and his whole pursuit through 
life, being to obtain his happiness here and to secure an ever- 
lasting blessing beyond the grave, his noblest efforts and highest 
interest would be in living up to the precepts of religion, pro- 
vided he had a full and unshaken conviction of what he out- 
wardly professes. What, I ask, should be more honorable, 
amongst a professing community, than the name of a Christian, 
as obtained by a pious observance and humble submission to 
the will of God, and a steady and marked regard for the well 
being of mankind. And again, what more pleasing and profit- 
able than the happiness arising from the bright scenes and 
glorious prospects that stretch out before us, through the 
lengthened vista of eternity ? I say, then, that the defect is 
not in the constitution or nature of man, who ever turns with 
as much certainty with the conviction of his mind to the largest 
amount of interest or happiness, as does the needle to the pole. 
Who, then, in possession of this world's first honors, (a true 
disciple of Christ,) and in full view of the glories of heaven, 
would, under this fixed and ruling law of our mind, barter them 
for the puny and ephemeral rule amongst his dying fellow- 
mortals. It is not, then, as I have said, possible, in our nature, 
to be irreligious through obstinacy or an unwillingness to 
receive the largest blessing or greatest amount of happiness 
here and hereafter, but, because of the bad example of Chris- 
tian membership, together with a lingering doubt of the whole 
system, got up and kept up by the distracting opinions and 
angry controversies of the clergy themselves. When an ungodly 
man says, he believes in the truth of Christianity, it is a nominal, 
a popular, and fashionable belief, for if his conviction were as 
that of his natural senses, he would escape the burnings of hell 
quicker, if possible, than he would a burning building in whose 
flames he might be enveloped. There are many varieties and 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 321 

shades of belief, that may be presented to the human mind, the 
strongest and most pressing of which will always prevail. 
Hence it is that we act upon the conviction of the old adage, 
that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Let two 
objects of trade or speculation be presented to our mind, and 
other things being equal, or no counteracting consideration 
intervening, we will as certainly make choice of the larger in- 
terest, as that water, unobstructed, will tend downwards. I 
have been a long and close observer of all the workings of the 
human mind, which is, I affirm, as fully under the control of 
fixed and immutable laws, as is the physical world. As in- 
separable as cause and effect, is the motive and the will, and 
as unavoidable as visual perception to the open eye, is the 
result, the will following the motive, and the act obeying the 
will. Just as certainly as that the miser will prefer the dollar 
to its half, can we affirm that all men will have a preference 
for, or make choice of the larger interest rather than the 
smaller, and the greater blessing than the lesser. In other 
words, that all men will prefer pleasure to pain, which the 
largest amount of interest, if legal and just, will always give. 
This is an axiom, as self-evident to my mind as that two and 
two make four, or that the whole is greater than a part; and it 
is as demonstrable throughout all its equivocal bearings and 
apparent incompatibilities as any abstract problem in physical 
science. All will grant, as a universal law of nature, that if a 
stone, or other ponderous body be cast into the atmosphere, it 
will return, yet should it be prevented by a lodgement or some 
obstructing body, it makes ho exception to the rule or law of 
gravitation. It is a philosophic maxim, that all bodies, pro- 
jected in a straight line, will continue in that line, except ob- 
structed or retarded by other powers, and this law, though 
founded upon the fact, that no body has the power either to 
start or stop itself without a cause, is just as equivocal and 
insidious as the turning of the will to the various interposing 

motives. A rifle-ball may leave the muzzle auned and projected 

14* 



322 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

directly to the centre, and yet widely miss it. An experienced 
marksman may, however, detect the numerous counteracting 
powers upon his ball, as gravitation, friction, the countercur- 
rents and shiftings of the winds, etc. In like manner may the 
mind, by long experience and close observation of its own 
actions, detect the various counteracting and shifting powers 
or motives that control the will. If a man wills to walk and 
see his neighbor, his locomotive muscles are put in motion in 
that direction as a sequence of that desire, and he will as cer- 
tainly continue in that direction as will a projected body, till 
changed by a counteracting power. Should he hear the cry 
of fire upon the right or left, he will, if the second excitement 
or desire be stronger than the first, be turned to the right or 
the left. In like manner, should a messenger overtake him 
with the information of the sudden death of one of his family, 
his anxiety will immediately give him a retrogressive motion. 
In all this, there is no mystery, the effect always following its 
sufficient cause or strongest motive. The science of mind is 
like the pathological and therapeutic science of medicine or 
body, governed by diversion, revulsion, metastasis, translation 
or change of excitement, through the influence of medicine, 
from one part of the body to another, or from the more vital 
to the less vital organ. The observance of those laws, with a 
familiar acquaintance with the vis mtdicatrix natura, or the 
efforts of nature to remove disease and restore the body to 
health, constitutes the whole philosophy or science of medicine. 
Nor is the failure of prognosis, in certain cases, any proof that 
the science is not perfect, or that every cause, either in sickness 
or in health, is not equal to its effect, but that our vision is 
unequal to its dark and winding ways. The science of mind is 
as unerring and easily understood as that of body or matter, 
if we confine our investigations to the how, and leave the why 
to the province of God, who alone can know. From the non- 
observance of this distinction, has the study of mind become 
exceedingly complicated and obscure. The schoolmen with their 



STRICTURES UPON A SERSION. 323 

little niceties in abstractions, divisions, sub-divisions, technicali- 
ties, useless particulars, and learned nonsense, have so incum- 
bered the science of metaphysics as to be as little understood 
by the writer as the reader. This same class of sapicnts or 
schoolmen, so called from their great pretentions to learning 
and ability to render God's word and the doctrines of his revela- 
tion plainer and more rational than he himself could or did do, 
have divided the Christian world into ten thousand different 
sects, and distracted the subject of religion. This book stultifi- 
cation and vain glory has ever been the bane of godly piety 
and vital religion, as well as the opprobrium of science. It was 
this sacrilegious pretention to prophetic wisdom and mystic 
learning that God confounded by the humble and untaught, 
and would to God that the humbler classes would now-a-days 
think for themselves, and thus preserve the purity and unity of 
divine revelation. Though sooth-saying and fortune-telling have 
lost their rank, our modern biblical commentators and prophets 
claim a prerogative and dignity over the learned expositors of 
dreams, riddles and conundrums, and yet all will acknowledge 
that they are not as apt to be correct. Hence it is, that I say 
to you, my fellow-travelers to the bar of God, that it is a libel 
upon his great and eternal name, to maintain the awful respon- 
sibility, that God has given to his people a law beyond their 
capacity, and that he will burn them in hell-fire for ever and 
for ever, for not understanding* it. Is not, then, the humblest 
layman in our land as well qualified and as fully authorized to 
judge of the word of God, and to foresee the fulfilment of his 
prophesies, as the learned Dr. Miller, who brought the world to 
an end, some years since, and sent a number of his phrensied 
followers, with their ascension-robes, to eternity. A little exer- 
cise of God's best gift, common sense, and of that abused 
faculty, "poor human reason," the world might have been saved 
from conflagration, and those poor deluded fanatics from 
destruction; so much for great learning, in mystic matters. 
But more of this in another number, we will back to the estab- 



324 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

lishraent of certain facts, the ground work of all legitimate in- 
vestigation. 

We should look at existing facts as they are, and placing 
our Jacob staif here as a starting point, inductively pursue the 
laws of nature as God has ordained them. If we look back for 
the reason of things, we are quickly led beyond first causes, 
and lost in the regions of infinity and eternity. Sir Isaac 
Newton satisfied himself with pursuing the laws of gravitation 
from its infant exhibition in bringing the apple to the ground, 
up to its gigantic grasp and mighty power in binding the 
heavenly bodies to their bidden spheres through limitless space. 
He recognized this power as an established law of nature, nor 
spent idle time in the abstract question, why God thus ordained 
it, and whether those laws are upheld by his immediate pres- 
ence, or governed by secondary causes. I shall not here dis- 
miss the question whether this law of the human mind that 
governs men's actions, be voluntary or involuntary, a rule of 
necessity or of liberty, as the result upon society in either case 
will be the same. After premising what I have, then, as the 
basis of future observation, and giving the examples I have, as 
the only just mode of reasoning, we will go back to my first 
proposition, that man, though endowed with many susceptibil- 
ities and innate principles, as the recipients of knowledge and 
passion, is yet the creature of circumstances. For example, it 
is just as natural for a man to fall into the prejudices and habits 
of the government and the people with whom he associates 
from his birth up, as it is for him to speak his mother tongue ; 
yet without this inborn principle of susceptibility, or the original 
wax upon which the seal of his character is to be stamped, he 
could not be shaped by circumstances. Again, our kind 
Creator has implanted in us a conscience, the sequence or con- 
viction of reason, to point out to us the right from the wrong. 
Hence it is, that the Apostle Paul says, Rom., chap. 2: 14-15, 
"For when the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature 
the things contained in the law, these having not the law, 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 325 

are a law unto themselves, which shows the work of the 
law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing 
witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else 
excusing one another ; yet this best gift and most infallible 
guide of our veering nature is under this law of circumstances. 
The same child that is reared in Turkey, and consequently 
a conscientious Mussulman, would, if born in a Christian 
land, if bad example did not deter him, be a Christian. 
Then I again revert to this law of circumstances and induce- 
ments, and affirm, that other things being equal, men will 
always be governed by the largest amount of interest, or 
the strongest motive that is presented to his choice. And 
hence the necessity under this law of our nature, in addressing 
men's judgments, and of convincing them of their true and last- 
ing interest. This being done, he is at once made a Christian, 
for, as we have shown from the constitution of our nature, it is 
impossible to resist it ; for what man is there, I again ask, un- 
der heaven, who in possession of his reason, will prefer pain to 
pleasure, and misery to happiness ? Where we do not embrace 
Christianity, I again and again affirm, say what we may about 
a nominal profession, that it is for the want of a rational faith, 
a deep and abiding conviction of all its attendant consequences, 
of divine honors and transcendent glories, or unutterable misery 
and woe, through all eternity. If men make choice of their 
best interests in small matters, will they not, under an equal 
conviction, do it in great ones? Do not abuse '^ poor human 
reason," the divine gift of God, and only guide to his existence, 
his attributes and his moral government, but address it with 
argum-ents suited to its dignity and high prerogative, and you 
will gain its respect, when by meekness, penitence, and un- 
mistaken marks of piety in your own person, you will obtain 
its unavoidable submission to your reasonable injunctions. 
While at this point, we will dwell a moment to show what this 
" poor human reason" has done for the world, and how far we 
are under obligation to ''great clerical learning.''^ Look back 



6'Zb MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

at the first dawnings of the true system of astronomy, and 
see how by the use of this "poor human reason" Galileo dis- 
covered and calculated the movement of the heavenly bodies, 
and for this valuable labor and honest pursuit of God's laws, 
did the " learned clergy" burn his book and throw him in 
prison I When Harvey discovered the circulation of the 
blood, by "poor human reason,'' the "learned clergy" avoided 
and vilified him as an infidel, because of their " learned'' 
belief that the pulse was the bounding spirit, striving to escape 
from its tenement of clay. When Roger Bacon, by the free- 
dom and exercise of "poor human reason," discovered the mode 
of making gunpowder, the *' learned clergy" excommunicated 
him, as having dealings with the Devil, and threw him in 
prison, where he died. All who read know that poor human rea- 
son has long struggled against the persecutions of the learned 
clergy, in establishing the true system of Geology. In each and 
every one of those cases, the immutable laws of Go^ and his 
Divine reason prevailed against the hootings of fanaticism, super- 
stition and learned nonsense. And how disgusting to pious sensi- 
bility and discouraging to rational religion, to see how those 
professors of love and charity, of truth and honesty, can, after 
condemning, persecuting and killing the author, come forward 
with an air of tolerance and self-composure, and sacrilegiously 
claim a portion in the author's honors, granting, when they 
can no longer resist it, that those eternal and immutable laws 
of Deity are in no wise incompatible with their self-constituted 
isms. Those are a few cases of the contrast in poor human 
reason and learned Divinity, that have this moment presented 
themselves to my mind, more of which, however, may be ex- 
pected in an after number. And before I discharge this sub- 
ject, I ask the reader to look back upon the history of mankind, 
and he will see that all reform has been the work of reason. 
He will see that all the awakenings of the enslaved and benight- 
ed mind to just and to" honorable principles, has been the slow 
and steady work of reason, against ignorance, witchcraft, su- 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 32t 

perstition and idolatry. Yes, and he will see that the improve- 
ments in government, in religion, and in all the great concerns 
of life and of human society, reason has had to bear with the 
dominion and tyranny of prejudice and custom. 

All others, as well as the clergy, will acknowledge that 
what they complain of is true, to wit : that the Bible and 
their preaching of it, has but little influence upon the morals 
and religious habits of the community, and the reason why, is 
in my opinion as follows : There is too much formality, sectar- 
ianism, pride and pretension, and too little humility and piety 
amongst the clergy themselves, to maintain a happy influence 
over the minds of others. From the connection of pastor and 
people, we may suppose that but few cases out of the number 
that actually exist, would, when to the disgrace of both parties 
be brought to light ; yet the public prints are filled with 
charges, such as I would blush to record, against this holy 
order, from Bishops down. Again, after all the vituperat- 
ive utterings and anathemas hurled against the world, and 
the many charges of crimes, ommissive and commissive against 
their own churches, we can see no difference between the 
pastor and the people, either natural or supernatural. And 
not but that they may be very good men, but that they 
preach and pretend to more than human nature can sustain ; 
and hence it is, that from this apparent inconsistency in preach- 
ing and practice, we so frequently hear the charge of hypo- 
crisy against the members, and of the want of truth and 
efficacy in the whole system. And again, there is too much 
stress put upon church formalities, with its paraphernalia of 
creeds and confessions of faith, of biblical dogmas and theolo- 
gical enigmas, which the people can neither understand nor 
subscribe to. It was this mystic mummery and black stain 
upon the word of God, with the arrogant and haughty manner 
of enforcing them upon the humble and untaught, who were 
neither allowed to read nor think for themselves, that Martin 
Luther strove to get rid of. The humblest member of society 



328 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

who believes in a God, adores him as a kind father who will 
not hold him responsible for any communication from him, in 
foreign languages or in figurative expressions, which he has not 
given him capacity to understand, and consequently sees no ne- 
cessity for employing others to quarrel about the mysteries of 
his revelation. And though the tyranny of churches may pre- 
scribe and .enjoin a certain faith, there is a secret feeling of re- 
bellion at heart, got up by the spirit of liberty, and sustained 
by the word of God. If we cannot recognize the Pope as the 
great expounder and mouth-piece of God, in rendering his word 
to man plainer or more intelligible than he himself could or 
would do, as they tell us, why submit to the dictum of ten 
thousand popes, all of whom differ from each other, and quar- 
rel amongst themselves. All this mysticism and mutability, 
as represented by the stickling wiseacres and learned disput- 
ents, looks little like the word and will of a wise and benevolent 
creator, who has so wisely and unerringly adapted and pro- 
portioned means to ends in his physical universe. Speak of pa- 
pistical ceremonies, and all Protestants cry out, slaves to re- 
ligious usurpation, and yet we are beset with as many grievous 
incumberances to the simple word of God and to the progress 
of vital religion, as obtained in the darker ages. We frequently 
hear doctrines from the pulpit self-contradictory, and wholly 
incompatible with the wisdom, goodness, and distributive just- 
ice of God, which necessarily begets a doubt whether the whole 
book may not be a falsication unworthy the character of a 
holy, just and beneficient Creator. And hence it is that all 
instituted forms and ritual injunctions, calculated to bewilder 
the mind or divert our attention from simple and fervent devo- 
tion, together with the creeds, ites and isms, which in the esti- 
mation of the world or of other sects, tend to impeach the 
wisdom, goodness or veracity of God, should be excluded from 
our churches. But man will be man in whatever condition of 
life he may be found. Whether in secular or in sacred rela- 
tions, the desire of rule, the pride of party and the comforts of 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 329 

gain, is the nether passion and the main spring of action. No 
single act of a man's life should be taken as a full and faithful 
portrait of his character, nor should a single pursuit or an iso- 
lated condition in society be recorded as more than an item 
in writing out the history of mankind in general. Now, as 
our position is that man is unerringly governed by the strongest 
or ruling motive, and as we have set out to show what induce- 
ments should be urged upon his mind, and by what manner 
he is to be controlled in religious matters, it may not be amiss 
to trace him beyond these limits, and show that he is as 
certainly moved by the same principle as is the needle by the 
magnet, throughout his various relations in life. 

The principles upon which all clubs and associations of men, 
as Masonry, Odd Fellowship, &c., &c., are got up, is the same, 
and the band that binds them as a brotherhood is a unit. All 
make fair outward pretentions, but selfish gain and pride of 
fraternity has the mastery in all such associations. In Masonry, 
for example, a very old and excellent institution, the profession 
— yes, and indeed, the object, is charity; but what the induce- 
ments for membership? Selfish gain of distinction, of popularity, 
of individual claim upon the brotherhood, a policy of insurence 
in times of trial and difficulty, fine dinners, fine aprons, and a 
gaping and admiring public. Strip Masonry of all its para- 
phernalia and mystic forms, and confine the members to the con- 
templation of humanity and the gifts of charity, and they 
would lose their ardor for the cause. If any member doubt 
this, let him, in all conscience, and in the presence of his 
God, ask himself whether he cannot be as charitable as 
he wishes, and as good out of the Lodge as in it; and as an 
honest and an honorable man he will join with me in saying that 
in him I have given a true character of human nature. 

The same principle rules in governmental affairs, and when 
a politician professes the good of his country and his love for 
the people to be his supreme object in seeking office, though we 
have his word, we cannot grant him an exception to this law of 



330 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

human nature There has ever been a struggle between the 
inns and the outs for office, and for no other object than that of 
guarding the interests of their country, and yet the treasury 
department has felt many defalcations. Should a learned and 
eloquent statesman say that he had given party names and en- 
joined confessions of faith, for the purposes of rallying a party 
around him, their leader, with no other object than that of his 
country's good, I will say that he is mistaken, and that he, 
though in high station, is but a man. Thus having spent a few 
moments in tracing the principles upon which we set out, 
through its various relations in life, we will return with its ap- 
plication to our rulers in Church. If the people were to disre- 
gard all expounders of the Constitution, and judging of that 
simple article for themselves, and unite as one man in their love 
of country, which they would do, but for the intrigues of those 
loving politicians, civil wars and bloodshed would be unknown. 
And so I will say of the learned and partisan clergy, that if 
the people would have less faith in their mummeries and preten- 
tions to mystic learning, and read the simple word of God, and 
worship for themselves, there would be but one God, one Church, 
and one people. Then should we have a perfect brotherhood, 
a heaven on earth, where the heart-burnings, bitter abuse, and 
awful butcheries produced by Christian partisans and leaders 
would be known no more for ever. But then, and in that case, 
where would the great reverence for magic learning and the 
high salaries come from; not that the clergy prefer good sal- 
aries and the admiration usually conferred upon them by their 
party, to the union of churches and the happiness of the peo- 
ple, Not at all, for I am incapable of making any such invidi- 
ous and oblique cuts at a class of men, most of whom, I know 
to labor faithfully and conscientiously for the good of their flock. 
But I do contend in good faith, that when those gentlemen 
think that worldly gain and party honor and influence has no- 
thing to do with their sectarian feelings and zeal to increase 
their members, that they are mistaken, and do not recollect that 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 331 

they are but men, fallible men, and just as liable to err as poli- 
ticians and leaders in other relations of life. When the millen- 
nium shall take place, the reformation must commence in the 
Christian Church, where new sects are yearly rising, and the 
Church divisions becoming greater. Being a Unionist, I look 
with sincere regret and alarm at the present condition of the 
Church and the low ebb of simple, unparadeful and primitive 
devotion. All difference of opinion, and even the loss of con- 
fidence in the goodness and distributive justice of God, is got up 
by learned comment at or s^ whose blind zeal and gross ignorance 
of God's true character, narrow him down to their own selfish 
purposes. And thus are disputes got up in the Church of God, 
and skeptics amongst the people. For instance, when we hear 
it preached that God has determined from all eternity to send 
nine hundred and ninty-nine in a thousand of his children, child- 
ren of his own begetting, for we did not make ourselves, to hell, 
and there to endure its torments for ever and for ever, we are 
shocked with the declaration and feel that this is not our God, 
who has created us after his own image and spread so many 
blessings around us in this, his natural world. And though it 
may be quoted, that the potter hath power over the clay to 
make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor, &c., who that 
will contemplate the infinity, the eternity, the wisdom, and the 
goodness of the Almighty maker, or will gaze upon those rolling 
orbs and burning hosts of heaven, can think that such a being 
would condescend to be the creator of a favored party, much 
less to send all others to hell without a crime ! I say without 
a crime, for who that can alter the immutable decrees of the 
Eternal, or escape by any act of theirs, the mandates of heaven ? 
There is but a verbal difference between a law-maker and a 
sovereign interpreter of laws to whose interpretations all are 
bound to submit. And yet to this blasphemy and idolatry must 
we submit, or bear the opprobium of impiety and unbelief. 

Mr. Chillingworth says upon this subject, that '* this pre- 
sumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the words of 



332 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

God, the special senses of men upon the general words of God, 
and laying them upon men's consciences together under the 
equal penalty of death and damnation; this vain conceit that 
we can speak of the things of God better than the words of 
God; this defying our own interpretations, and tyrannous enforc- 
ing them upon others; this restraining of the Word of God from 
that latitude and generality, and the understanding of men from 
that liberty, which Christ and his Apostles left them; is, and hath 
been the only fountain of all the schisms of the Church; and 
that which makes the immortal, the common incendiary of 
Christendom; and that which tears in pieces, not the coat, but 
the bowels and members of Christ." 

This able Divine is severe, yet if we seriously consider the 
liberty that Divines take with the Word of God, and their dic- 
tatorial and imperious manner of imposing their creeds upon 
the consciences of others, we will think it not too much so. They 
take the word out of God's mouth, and make him the common 
executioner of their will, and for our want of submission to this 
gross sacrilege and criminal idolatory, we have the dreadful 
anathemas of synods and councils, as against a wretch who de- 
nies the Word of God. Every passage of Holy Writ bearing 
the semblance of the grant of power, is seized upon and kindly 
appropriated to themselves. As, " he that is spiritual judgeth 
all things, (as the Pope,) yet he himself of no man." " Things 
present and things to come, all are yours." "Whatsover thou 
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven," &c. This divine 
power is granted by millions of benighted and enslaved laymen 
to their abstruse and wily leaders. These doctrines, and the 
destruction which they have engendered in the Christian Churches, 
are well calculated to lessen our confidence in the goodness and 
veracity of God, and to beget a universal scepticism. Men of 
enlarged minds and liberal hearts are not misled by those slanders 
upon the character of the Eternal, who if there were not ample 
proof in his Holy word, would in the construction of the human 
eye alone, convict them of falsehood. Let any one, whose mind 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 333 

is not corrupted by false religion, but examine the construction 
of this single atom of creation, and in it he will find a trans- 
cendent beauty and perfection, with a self-evident conviction of 
design in the adaptation of means to ends, revealing to man, 
not only the existence of a God, but his supernatural wisdom 
and loving kindness to his creatures. And thus it is, that men 
of enlarged minds and liberal souls, can, by a knowledge of 
God's natural and demonstrative revelation correct, the factiti- 
ous and slanderous systems that have been got up in this world, 
through design, ignorance and superstition. And though those 
systems have rose and sunk, through revolving ages, time with 
the precepts of morality and the efforts of philosophy, have done 
but little in giving to man a correct knowledge of his Creator. 
The ennui and monotony of simple, plain truth, the labor and 
irksomness of a long life of honesty, with an almost universal 
aversion to the use oi poor human reason, are too deeply rooted 
to be easily overcome by the teachings of morality and philo- 
sophy. Hence the quickness with which the masses catch at 
all new revelations, made up of miracles and mysteries too deep 
to be understood by poor human reason. Nor is this strange 
when we see the convenience of a religion, that is to save us by 
faith, by external signs, and by the instituted forms of Churches, 
as counting beads, making crosses, &c. ; or mummeries equally 
delusive to vulgar minds, and contemptible to reason, enjoined by 
Protestant creeds and rituals. Were one of true piety and ra- 
tional devotion to say to those devotees to man and to forms, 
serve your God and save your money, he would be hooted out of 
society by the howling mass, and persecuted as an infidel. It 
is easier to have others to think for us and to pay them for in- 
dulgencies, which God, who requires of us a more rigid morality 
and upright life, might not grant ! Faith and formality then, 
will always be the religion of the selfish and indolent, who are gov- 
erned more by their outward senses and selfish passions, than 
by a rational regard for God and the simplicity of his revelation. 
A religion that acknowledges the universal love, equality, and 



334 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

equity of God's government, and that looks for salvation through 
an honest he irt, an upright life, tolerance, kindness, and charity 
towards our fellow man, and a loving obedience to our Heavenly 
Father, the one, the mighty, and the eternal God; is known to 
but few, and is condemned as the religion of poor human reason. 
As above remarked, men of science and of enlightened 
minds, who look into the mighty works of the eternal, are not 
readily misled by the partial, the trashy and ephemeral relig- 
ions of this world. And he will, by a knowledge of his 
natural revelation, be able to detect the many defamatory and 
degrading errors, which through mistranslations, transcrip- 
tions, interpellations, etc., etc., have crept into his written or 
book-revelation. When, by the exercise of that divine and 
immortal reason, the gift and spark of Deity himself, we dis- 
cover that the eye is made for light, the ear for sound, and 
the lungs for the vital air, and that we are in our anatomical 
form and in our physiological functions made for the world in 
which we live, and that we are endowed with exquisit sensibi- 
lities for the enjoyment of the many beauties and blessings 
which he has spread around us, cannot believe that so loving 
and so kind a father can delight in the arbitrary condemnation 
and awful punishment of those his dependent and unoffending 
creatures, through all eternity. Therefore it is, that those 
who are blessed with a true appreciation of the divine attri- 
butes, both from his transcendant might, majesty, and glory, 
as shown by his rolling orbs and glowing heavens, and his 
wise creations and beneficent bestowings of his temporal bless- 
ings upon this little earth, have a well grounded faith and un- 
shaken confidence in the continued love and immutable designs 
of the great author of our being. Thus, amidst the conflicting 
opinions of bigots and the bloody persecutions of religious par- 
ties, have we an inward security and a peace of mind that 
reconciles us with the dispensations of providence in this 
world, and buoyes us on to the confines of eternity. Far diffe- 
rent is it with those poor deluded beings who are under the 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 335 

dominion and guidance of designing or ignorant and fallible 
man. They have no correct knowledge of, or confidence in 
God, but being worshippers of men and their isms, are cut up 
into as many parties as there are blind and prejudiced leaders. 
And though mutable, vague and insufficient as are many of 
those creeds, and encumbered as they are by mystic mumme- 
ries, known by men of enlightened minds to be the sanctuary 
of ignorance, pass with those benighted zelots as deep learn- 
ing and skill in the mysteries of revelation. The God of this 
vast universe is too exalted for their demented conceptions, 
nor could he, like their party God, condescend to minister to 
their petty prejudices. As offensive to Deity, and degrading 
to the name of Christianity, as are those party-creeds and 
quarrels, they are weekly heard from our pulpits. Those 
creeds, founded upon the party-prejudices of God, and his par- 
tial dealings with man, is a profanation of his holy name, for 
neither in our temporal or eternal relations is he any respector 
of persons, nor does he delight in the death of any, but would 
that all should be saved. We know that the minds of the 
religious world were long long enslaved by an interested and 
crafty priesthood, who well knew how to minister to the low 
and selfish passions of man. Nor is the name of the great 
Eternal more exalted by modern Divines, who, instead of in- 
culcating an enlightened and settled regard for their creator, 
strive to get up excitements through our slavish fears, by 
threats of vengeance, destruction, and damnation, and not by 
a kind father or impartial judge, but a God of jealousy, vin- 
diction, and relentless cruelty. A God, who, like the potter, 
shapes us for destruction, and then damns us eternally for 
being thus shaped — see confession of faith. A God, w^ho has 
authorized his elect and the high priests "to go out with 
praises in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, 
to execute vengeance upon the heathen and punishment upon 
the people; to bind their kings with chains and their nobles 
with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment 



836 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

written, this honor hath all his saints, praise ye the Lord." 
Psalm 149. The construction put upon this passage, and 
many others that might be named, by what the people call 
learned Divines, has given a loose and a license to all the self- 
ish, vile and cruel passions of man. 

With those interpretations of deep learning, the admiration 
of the vulgar and the living of thousands, did the most learned 
Divines on earth send forth their saints with a libel in their 
mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to rob, ravish, 
and murder the humble and unoffending natives of the new 
world. Thus, with a license from the Christian's God of re- 
lentless and wanton cruelty, did they butcher thousands upon 
thousands of their innocent and defenceless fellow-beings in 
South America and Mexico. And to the horror and detesta- 
tion of all mankind, and to the eternal shame and disgrace of 
the Spanish name, did those elect of God, those self-styled 
Christians cruelly mangle the bodies of those poor simple 
children of nature, and feed them to the dogs. The relation 
of those scenes remind me of what I recently heared from a 
learned and zealous protestant Divine, who, in a public con- 
troversy in the Bible support of slavery, not only quoted the 
book in support of all his positions, but the word of God for 
cutting our slaves up and feeding them to the dogs. The 
support from the Bible for all such cruelties is not unusual for 
Divines of deep learning. The doctrine is neither new nor 
rare, that God has authorized his elect to enslave all heathens, 
that is, such as they may see proper to call so, and that after 
they shall have served them through this life, he will damn 
them eternally, in part for his own glory, but more especially 
to show forth his partiality and the elect's honor. Do not 
suppose, reader, that this is a tirade upon assumptions, but be 
assured that it is the record of facts, facts, too, of the most 
serious and solemn character. This is only the relation of a 
few points amongst the thousands and tens of thousands that 
give a loose to men's consciences, and influence their acts 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 33t 

through the various relations of life. If we were to take the 
liberty with the word of God, that Divines do, there is no act 
so base but that we could find Scripture to support it. If 
Christians themselves can drag each other to the stake, there 
to be consumed by fire, and find Scripture for it, what may not 
others do, by authority from the same book, in which passages, 
may be found to justify any act to which their passion or profit 
may prompt them. The clergy themselves, leaders of the various 
sects, have charged each other with sustaining of "hell-peop- 
ling doctrines,'' yes, doctrines subversive both of religion and 
of morality, and they have urged those charges both in lan- 
guage and in spirit, such as no men of honor or tolerance should 
condescend to. I cannot but believe, and that upon impartial 
observation, that a large portion of secret acts and other evils 
of society proceeds from the same misconstruction of divine 
authority. This liberty that the clergy have taken, of con- 
struing Scripture to answer their own ends, and the doctrine 
that faith in their dictum will cover a multitude of sins, have 
broken upon the morals of society. I heard a clergyman, a 
short time since, when preaching upon the subject of faith, 
speak most disparagingly of "a certain class of men, called hon- 
est, high-minded, and honorable, who, in his estimation, were 
the most dangerous examples to society." And his reason was 
this, that those who did not belong to the church, (his church, 
of course,) depended more upon good works than upon faith, 
(I presumed, his faith); and as destructive to the well being 
of society, as such sentiments are, and offensive to the ear of 
propriety, he affirmed that there was more hope for, and more 
promise in divine revelation, for the deist, the drunkard, liar, etc., 
than for such man. He taught the prevailing doctrine, that 
moral men are slow to come into the church, or to confess to 
the creeds of men, while the outlaw may, by such confession, 
atone for years of sin and pollution; or that he may, like the 
thief upon the cross, be converted and saved in a moment. I 
will here say to all such preaching, that I prefer the internal 

15 



338 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE, 

to the external marks of religion, and the fruit to the foliage 
of the tree. Besides, I cannot see whose works we are to de- 
pend on, if not upon our own. I know that a formal or pro- 
fessional religion that will swallow a whole confession of faith, 
without digesting an article in it, is easier to live up to, and 
far more popular in this world, than a religion of piety and 
good works. And I also know, that profession, the cloak of 
deception, is the road to popularity, both in church and in 
state. A devotion to the clergy, a blind submission to their 
creeds, and^ a stickler for forms, constitutes a worldly and 
popular Christian, while a flatterer of the powers that be, with 
a great love for the people, makes a popular politician. But 
I likewise know that a good man is a good man, in or out of 
church, and that a bad man is a bad man, in or out of church. 
It is proper that good men as well as bad men should join the 
church, as an example to others, just as it is that sober men as 
well as drunkards should join temperance societies; yet it is 
known that it does not better the sober man, or improve the 
good man. 

We farther know that arrogant learning, superstition, and 
the foul breath of popular prejudice, held the human mind in 
captivity for ages, till from cruelty, oppression and persecution, 
reason and common sense rebelled. And after all, what is now 
the condition of the Protestant world ? Instead of one dicta- 
torial and scowling master, the Pope, we have thousands ; and 
instead of one church and one interpreter, we have scores 
whose antagonal broils have led us into an inextricable laby- 
rinth of perplexity. In this state of things, what is an honest 
man and faithful Christian to do, but to think for himself and 
worship for himself To read and obey the practical and un- 
mistaken word of God, and doubting not but that they see as 
far into the mill-stone, as those who pick it. The question 
may arise what constitutes a Christian ? whether the practice 
or profession of religion, the external or internal marks of it ? 

I will here give the view of an Indian Chief upon this sub- 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 339( 

ject, as related to me at Galena in 1833 by an official Indian 
Agent of our government. A missionary clergyman made ap- 
plication to a chief for the privilege of establishing a mission in 
his nation. The chief asked the missionary what he expected 
to do for his people, and whether he could make them any 
better ? The answer was that they were to be greatly im- 
proved, in many respects. They were to be civilized, Christ- 
ianized, etc. If then, rejoined the chief, you can do so much for 
my people who do not understand your language, and to whom 
you are a stranger, you can certainly do much more amongst 
your own people, who know both you and your language. 
Your white Christians have introduced whiskey amongst us, 
made my people drunk, robbed them of their skins, insulted 
our wives and daughters, and murdered us. So go back to 
to your own nation and preach to them, and when you can 
make those Christians sober, honest and truthful men, I will 
send for you to preach to my people." I have been much 
amongst those children of nature, and know that they enter- 
tain for the Christian name deep feelings of horror, and view 
ns as faithless, avaricious and blood-thirsty conquerors. This 
reproof by the chief was a just reproach upon us, as a civilized 
and Christian nation. It speaks volumes upon the subject, 
and again brings up the question upon which we set out : why 
the reading and the preaching of the gospel through many 
thousand years, has not made us a better people. It will not 
do here to urge the hackneyed charge against our perverse and 
poor human nature, as being unwilling to submit to our own in- 
terest, since we have shown that to be impossible. Yes, it has 
been shown, incontrovertibly shown, that man from his constitu- 
tion and inherent nature, cannot do otherwise than prefer the 
largest amount of interest or happiness, when honorable, and 
authorized both by the laws of God and man. It is not, then, in 
jpoor human naturt^ but in the false representation of the Gospel, 
through jjoor /a//iWe men, whose passions and prejudices give a 
version or transformation wholly repugnant to that divine reason, 



340 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the best and only test of all things, which God has given his 
creatures by which to know him and his kind dispensations, 
through his unmistaken and mighty works. I will now propose a 
reformation in the Christian world, by a change in the education 
of the clergy. They should be prohibited from the study of dead 
languages, and consequently from the ignorant and arrogant 
search after the root of religion, which is not in Latin and 
Greek, but in the soul, and the same in all languages, all na- 
tions, in all time and throughout eternity. I am well acquaint- 
ed with the habits of the Catholic clergy, and know them to be 
the closest students in the world. They study dead languages 
and memorize Scripture till they fritter their brains to a crisp, 
and narrow their souls to a nut shell, and thus become wholly 
disqualified for reasoning themselves, and consequently for ren- 
dering the Scriptures acceptable to reason. They should, if 
possible, travel, before their local and petty prejudices are 
formed. By mixing with various nations and seeing their 
various manners, habits and prejudices, their minds will become 
liberalized and enlarged, till they will be ashamed of their own. 
They will, moreover, find that this world is larger than they 
had supposed, and that it does not end where the visible sky 
goes down. Next they should study astronomy, by which they 
will find, that as large as this world is, it is not the only work 
of God, and that they are not the only and favored objects of 
creation. They will see worlds beyond worlds, innumerable 
and incomprehensible, and with thoughts far beyond this 
sphere of action, will cry out, as I have been forced to do : 

Eternal Father, whose power divine 

Ten thousand worlds obey, 
While fiery comets trackless blaze. 

And vary not their way ; 
Through endless space and ceaseless time 

Those ponderous orbs are rolled. 
By thy mighty arm upheld. 

And by thy power controlled. 
Still onward yet, and onward still. 

Tin lightning^s speed shall tire. 
Far distant worlds, dim twinkling stars, 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 341 

Evince the end no nigher. 
Vast are thy works, Jehovah great, 

Thou one eternal cause, 
Who spoke creation into being, 

And stamped it with thy laws. 
Let thoughts sublime of thee, Lord, 

My immortal soul inflame, 
To look to thee for every good, 

And praise thy holy name. 

Though not a poet; when in the contemplation of the vast- 
ness and sublimity of creation, our hearts overflow with love 
and gratitude to the author of our being ; we are authorized to 
express our thoughts in any manner that the occasion may 
suggest. If our little preachers, who may have had capacity, 
before their book stultification, were put to the study of the 
sciences, the condition of the churches as well as the state of 
society would be greatly improved. Their minds would become 
enlarged and their souls liberalized to a more exalted view of 
God and of his benign attributes. They would no longer preach 
a God that no one of clear head and correct heart Qan accept 
of. 'Not would they denounce the science and the practice of mo- 
rals, as a cold stoical philosophy, and as more dangerous to the 
progress of religion than impiety and infidelity. No, no, this 
could not be, and I pray to thee, o God, our heavenly father, 
for thy honor, for the good of the church, and for the safety 
and well being of society, that those slanders against thy holy 
name and against the honest portion of thy children, may no 
longer be found in the mouthes of those, thy professed ministers. 
As before stated, Divines have ever been the heaviest clogs to 
the progress of science, and what, if possible, is more reproach- 
ful and humiliating to the name of Christianity, they have re- 
sisted the advancement of morality ! Go back, reader, to the 
days of the immortal Socrates, and learn how he was put to 
death, because he would not degrade the great God of nature, 
by submitting to the tricks and mummeries of a corrupt and 
crafty heathen priesthood. And to make our narrative short, 
we will come down to the moral writers of more modern times. 



342 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRATE. 

** No sooner did that admirable treatise of Grotius of the right of 
war and peace, appear in the world, but the ecclesiastics, in- 
stead of returning thanks to the author for it, everywhere de- 
clared against hira, and his book was not only put into the ex- 
purgatory index of the Roman Catholic inquisition, but many, 
even Protestant Divines, labored to cry it down. And thus it 
was, too, with Mr. Puffendorff's book of the Law of Nature and 
of Nations. The Jesuits of "Vienna caused it to be prohibited, 
and many Protestant Divines, both of Sweden and Germany, 
did their best to make this excellent work share everywhere 
else the same fate." Locke, who has done more for the science 
of mind than all the other writers on earth put together, and 
who lived and died a pious, upright man, was vilified and be- 
set on all sides by a yelping pack of little Protestant clergy, 
whose selfish and contracted views have ever thought it best to 
keep the world in ignorance. Please look into the case of 
Bishop Batler, author of the Analogy of Natural and Revealed 
Rehgion, whose labors have done more for the honor of God, 
the cause of religion, the firmness of faith and happiness of 
man, by far than any other writer. Yet to the persecuted 
and afflicted name of Christianity was this great and good 
man snarled at while living, and barked at, when dead. Nor did 
Dr. Paley, the devoted Divine and able philosopher, fare much 
better. All his labors of a long life of ardent and faithful re- 
search after the sound principles of truth in religion and moral- 
ity would have been lost to the world, if left to the clergy. 
His natural religion and moral philosophy they hold to be 
dangerous, in other words, too rational for their selfish views 
and salaried interests. 

I find that a recent author, whose work I see is taking the 
place of Paley's, as a text-book in our schools, gives as an ex- 
cuse, that the work of Dr. Paley " abound in erroneous, defect- 
ive and pernicious principles." I have had occasion to look into 
this work, and find it as inferior to Paley as is the parasite to 
the noble tree upon which it subsists. His whole knowledge, 



STRICTURES UPON A SRRMON. 343 

and ground work, as far as it has any merit, is from the im- 
mortal and invuhierable bulworks of the divine Paley. In 
order, however, to differ from his benefactor, his inner fabric is 
a labyrinth of trash and detailed nonsense, made up of techni- 
calities, divisions and subdivisions, as learned as the vocabulary 
or nomenclature of Alchemy; and no pupil, after his bewilder- 
ment of brain, cao come out of such school with three consist- 
ent ideas of science. The bigoted merit which he so exulting 
claims, is the desertion of nature, and his substitution of the 
Bible as his guide, which was given to instruct us in our duty 
to God, and not as a system either of mental or of moral phi- 
losophy. I would not have spent three whole sentences upon 
so little a thing, but to hold it up to show which way the wind 
blows; for as sad to science and startUng to morality and relig- 
ion as may be the fact, the clergy will always enforce such 
books upon our schools, instead of the great and expanded 
principles of true and simple science ! This strange mixture of 
error and absurdity, of truth and hypothesis, with a perplexed 
and bewildering arrangement, will always keep the subject of 
mind and of mOrals too deep and too dark for the penetration 
of poor human reason. Hence it is, that as our Divines claim 
the exclusive privilege of interpreting mysteries, they claim this 
field for clerical investigation, and entertain a persecuting 
jealousy towards all who may attempt to bring those subjects 
to light and make them intelligible to the people. Let us here 
read what Dugald Stewart, in his introduction to his book upon 
the human mind, says upon this interesting subject. 

In speaking of the influence that parent, priest, and primer 
has, in impressing errors upon the youthful mind, he remarks, 
that " such and so permanent, is the effect of first impressions, 
on the character, that although a philosopher may succeed, by 
perseverence, in freeing his reason from the prejudices with which 
he was entangled, they will still retain some hold of his imagin- 
ation and his affections; and, therefore, however enlightened 
his understanding may be in his hours of speculation, his philo- 



344 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

sophical opinions will frequently lose their influence over his 
mind, in those very situations in which their practical assistance 
is most required: when his temper is soured by misfortune, or 
when he engages in the pursuits of life, and exposes himself to 
the contagion of popular errors. His opinions are supported 
merely by speculative arguments; and instead of being connect- 
ed with any of the active principles of his nature, are contracted 
and thwarted by some of the most powerful of them. How 
different would the case be, if education were conducted from 
the beginning with attention and judgment ? Were the same 
pains taken, to impress truth on the mind in early infancy, that 
is often taken to inculcate error, the great principles of our con- 
duct would not only be juster than they are; but in consequence of 
the aid which they would receive from the imagination and the 
heart, trained to conspire with them in the same direction, they 
would render us happier in ourselves, and would influence our 
practice more powerfully and more habitually. There is surely 
nothing in error, which is more congenial to the mind than 
truth. On the contrary, when exhibited separately, and alone, 
to the understanding, it shakes our reason and provokes our 
ridicule ; and it is only by an alliance with truths, which we find 
it difiicult to renounce, that it can obtain our assent, or com- 
mand our reverence. What advantages, then, might be derived 
from a proper attention to early impressions and associations, in 
giving support to those principles which are connected with hu- 
man happiness. The long reign of error in the world, and the 
influence it maintains even in an age of liberal enquiry, far from 
being favorable to the supposition, that human reason is destined 
to be for ever the sport of prejudice and absurdity, demonstrate 
the tendency which there is to permanence in established opinions 
and in established institutions, and promises an eternal stability 
to true philosophy when it shall once have acquired the ascend- 
ant, and when proper means shall be employed to support it, by 
a more perfect system of education. 

Let us suppose, for a moment, that this happy era were ar- 



I 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 345 

rived, and that all the prepossessions of childhood and youth 
were directed to support the pure and sublime truths of an en- 
lightened morality. With what ardor, and with what transport 
would the understanding, when arrived at maturity, proceed in 
the search of truth, when, instead of being obliged to struggle 
at every step, with early prejudices, its office was merely to 
add the force of philosophical coviction to impressions, which 
are equally delightful to the imagination and dear to the heart." 

Again : " If the first conceptions, for example, which an 
infant formed of the Deity, and its first moral perceptions, were 
associated with the early impressions produced on the heart by 
the beauties of nature, or the charms of poetical description, 
those serious thoughts which are resorted to, by most men, 
merely as a source of consolation in adversity, and which, on 
that very account, are frequently tinctured with some degree of 
gloom, would recur spontaneously to the mind in its best and 
happiest hours; and would insensibly blend themselves with all 
its purest and most refined enjoyments. Although in all moral 
and religious systems there is a great mixture of important truth, 
and although it is in consequence of this alliance, that errors 
and absurdities are enabled to preserve their hold of the belief, 
yet it is commonly found, that in proportion as an established 
creed is complicated in its dogmas and in its ceremonies, and 
in proportion to the number of accessory ideas which it has 
grafted upon the truth, the more difficult is it, for those who 
have adopted it in childhood, to emancipate themselves completely 
from its influence, and in those cases in which they at last suc- 
ceed, the greater is their danger of abandoning, along with their 
errors, all the truths which they had been taught to connect 
with them." 

Those few lines, from the well known Dugald Stewart, speaks 
volumes of philosophy, in regard to the moral training and gov- 
ernment of man. If, as he says, children in early life, were 
given a taste for nature, and for the sublime, it would lead them 
to an intunacy with the author of their being, and fill their souls 

15* 



346 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

with gratitude and love for so kind and so exalted a father. A 
knowledge of the might and majesty, the variety and benificence 
of the great Eternal, as acquired by the study of his works, is 
not to be shaken by all the pretended learning and conventional 
dogmas of poor ignorant and erring man. God's infallible, im- 
mutable, and eternal revelation as given in his great hook of 
nature, is not liable to mistranslations, or interpretations of 
designing or ignorant man ; consequently every intelligent man's 
opinion of God's moral government, is just as immutable as the 
laws by which they know him. It is far different with those 
who know God only through fafer books, in the local and equivo- 
cal languages of men. Hence it is, that I again and again 
affirm, that there is but one infallible test of religion, and that 
is the book of nature, or God ; for what is nature but God ? 
All the little petty Gospel-gossip of neighborhoods and Churches, 
together with the more extended and fiery indignation of parties 
that has led to cruel persecutions and merciless butcheries, have 
proceeded from a want of the true character of God, which 
can never be had from clerical leaders, all of whom differ from 
each other in regard to the will of God. There is no man on 
earth, not even the Pope himself, who can reconcile or correct 
those conflicting and distracting opinions; and, therefore, it is, 
that God has revealed himself in so unmistaken a manner, as a 
corrective to all those degrading wranglings. If those partisan 
leaders, of deep dogmatic and contradictory lear7dng, who the 
people worship and look to for all their knowledge of God, 
would leave his book revelation, with its divine and practical 
teachings to the people, there would be no need of a corrective 
standard, by which to know the will of our Heavenly Father. 

We hope that we have sufficiently shown why it is, that the 
clergy cry aloud that there is little or no religion in the land, 
and that the fault is in their representation of the subject in a 
manner not acceptable to rational minds, for otherwise, as 
proven by this essay, it could not, from our nature, be rejected. 
By way of illustration, 1 will here give one of the characters 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 34 1 

of our Christian God, as preached in a sermon which I but 
recently heard from an able and a good man. He set out with 
the assumption of everlasting punishment, and in order, as he 
said, to prove its reasonableness, he took the position, that from 
the inherent and unalterable nature of sin, as entailed upon us 
by Adam, that time could not change it, and that no power, in 
heaven, earth or hell, could conquer it. That God, from his 
purity, could neither prevent nor forgive it, and that no sacri- 
fice, even to the death of the whole human family, could atone 
for it, otherwise Christ would never have died upon the cross. 
That God had, through the lapse of ages, after millions upon 
millions had passed to hell, determined in the wisdom of his 
own counsel to sacrifice his son, as the only means under the 
heavens by which a sinner could ever be saved. That so great 
was this sacrifice, that God's hatred had, if possible, grown 
more inveterate and lasting against sin. Another position was, 
that sin required punishment from God, and that as punishment 
unavoidably begets hatred against the object that inflicts the 
punishment, we must, in the nature of things, forever hate God, 
because of the load of sin and its consequent punishment, en- 
tailed upon us through Adam. For example, said he, you can 
never whip any one, who has done you an injury, into a love 
for you, and the more you punish them, the more will they hate 
you. Just so it is with the sinner, and as we are all sinful by 
nature, we cannot, from our nature, avoid hating God, and as 
the hatred to God is an undying sin, God must as unavoidably 
punish us through all eternity. This to some, said he, may 
seem hard, but as there is a God in heaven, it is true, and the 
sinner, who will not believe it, is storing up wrath against 
wrath. Moreover, said he, some persons, and amongst them 
the TJniversalists, think it hard that for a very small crime or 
shade of difference only, one shall be called to heaven, and the 
other condemned to eternal damnation ; but that this he had 
shown to be reasonable, yea, a necessary result from the im- 
mutable nature of sin. Now, he remarked, it is plain to every 



348 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

common capacity, that if one be condemned to hell at all, 
though for the smallest possible sin, that as God lays the stripes 
upon him, his hatred against the iuflictor of his punishment 
must rise, so it will be seen that through all eternity will that 
hatred and consequent punishment grow greater and greater. 
Then it is self-evident, and must be acknowledged by all, that 
a soul, once doomed to hell, can never escape. Should a mem- 
ber of this Church, or a person in the house, want the case 
made plainer, I will give them an illustration. If any one 
wantonly punishes a brute, he has the indignation of all feeling 
persons; the same mistreatment of a human increases that 
indignation, in proportion to the elevation of the man above 
the brute. Now, as God is greatly above man, and unlimited 
in his nature, an offence against him must be unlimited, and as 
God is eternal, it follows that the indignation and punishment 
must be not only unlimited, but eternal. He admitted that his 
discourse was somewhat abstract and metaphysical, but added, 
that should there be a person in the house who did not under- 
stand the subject, that they had his veracity for it, that every 
word was true. In conclusion, he applied his doctrines with 
the vengeance of damnation and destruction to his poor tremb- 
ling and vacant audience. Trembling under the sin that so 
awful a God had incorporated in their nature, and for which 
they were to be eternally damned, and vacant in thought, 
being wholly lost in the amazing depth of his divine learning. 
He, with great solemnity, called their attention to this vile and 
detestable world in which we live, affirming that God, as a 
revenge upon Adam's race, had damned it from pole to pole; 
that he had cursed it with briar and bramble, with clouds and 
storms, and with pestilence and famine, and that they had been 
thrust into this world as a preparatory punishment to the ever- 
lasting torments of hell. Thus, said he, has God, in his in- 
finite wisdom and goodness, ordained things from all eternity, 
and in his wrath will he execute them. And fartherj that who 
by their poor human reason could suspend the power of God's 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 349 

holy will, who claims the right that the potter has over the 
clay, to frame us for destruction, as he in his infinite wisdom 
and mercy may deem proper. 

I should not have dwelt so long upon this sermon, nor been 
so particular in relating it as it was delivered, but it is a volume 
upon the subject on hand, and a fair specimen of the preaching 
in our day. In this case, as usual, there is a mixture of truth 
and falsehood, as Stewart says, and of eulogy and slander, 
which, I presume, but few of the audience either detected or 
understood. This man, if not ruined in early life by creeds, 
could never have libelled God as he did, nor sacrified him as he 
did to the abstract and metaphysical doctrines of a party. I 
would ask this gentleman, who by nature was a good man, and 
is yet as good as his religion will let him be, for what purpose 
God created man, and whether to be happy or miserable ? 
And farther, whether God could, consistently with his own 
attributes, act arbitrarily or wantonly with his creatures ? I 
would say, that as God is the author and parent of the human 
race, and has implanted in us a desire for happiness, that it 
was not to taunt, revile or sport with us by disappointments, 
but to grant us all rational desires, that we may thereby be- 
come happy in common with himself. If this, then, be a just 
position, and no one who grants the veracity and goodness or 
common justice of God, can deny it; he must have given to 
man some rule or standard of moral conduct, by which he is to 
secure and maintain that happiness. Now, God having given 
to man a law or rule of conduct, must also have given him a 
capacity, power or faculty to understand that law, and this 
faculty we call reason, which enables us to distinguish truth 
from falsehood, and right from wrong. Hence, by acting up 
to the dictates of our nature and of right reason, we are led to 
a knowledge of our great creator, the obligation we bear to 
him and to our fellow-man, and the immutable and eternal 
relation and reason of all things, as written in bold rehef, and 
stereotyped in his book of nature. If then, by our rational 



350 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE, 

nature, we can know our obligation to God, (which power he 
could not justly withhold,) and see that religion is nothing but 
a reasonable service, why submit to the dictates, petty passions 
and arbitrary rules of man ? This divine gift of reason by the 
eternal father to his children, with the light he has thrown 
upon his book of nature, the same in all ages, languages and 
nations, leaves no excuse for a dependence upon puny, erring 
man for translations, creeds or dictations. It now follows, 
upon the premises, that God cannot tolerate the devotee who 
knows him alone through ignorance and a blind faith in the 
fluctuating and conflicting opinions of others. The Hindoo may 
crush himself under the wheels of Juggernaut, the Mussulman 
may make his pilgrimage to Mecca, the Catholic may look to 
his priest, and the Protestant to his preacher for salvation, but 
the man of enlightened mind, freed from those clogs of super- 
stition, will worship his creator in a more rational and accept- 
able manner. It is through our senses, so exquisitely formed 
and so admirably adapted to the world in which we live, and 
by the use of that divine reason that our kind father has be- 
stowed upon us, that we are able to detect the slander upon 
this, his people's world, which he has given them in good faith. 
If the preacher, as above named, instead of heaping his un- 
authorized curses upon this world, (which he, by the by, would 
be as loth to leave as any,) had spoken of it in truth, as it is, 
it would have been more grateful and pleasing to its maker and 
donor, and by far more acceptable to the thinking portion of 
his audience. His self-stultification did not enable him to see 
that the sun ever shone through that sable cloud which he 
spread over this earth. His deep and biblical learning did not 
tell him that those vicissitudes of which he so disparagingly 
spoke, break the monotony and ennui of life, and give renewed 
energy and buoyancy to the grateful soul. Our heavens are 
replete with beauty, sublimity and shining glories, that by day 
and by night show forth the handiwork of their great creator. 
The forked lightnings that thwart the welkin and glare the 



STRICTUEES UPON A SERMON. 351 

startling eye, and the bellowing thunders that rent the vault 
of heaven and shake the solid earth, are God's appointed 
guards to our health and plenty. It purifies the atmosphere, 
and sends down refreshing showers upon the tender verdure, 
and upon the parched and thirsty earth. The momentary gloom 
of winter, with its chilling frosts, its howling winds, and whirl- 
ing snow-storms, but prepares the earth for a more abundant 
crop, and affords a striking illustration to man of how the 
reverses and storms of this life, may, by contrast, the better 
prepare us for the enjoyment of those eternal abodes of perennial 
bliss, to which we are bound. Soon, and the joyous outburst 
of spring, with its leafy forests, verdant plains, and balmy air 
will break upon our raptured vision, and transport the soul to 
the celestial regions, to hold converse with our heavenly father, 
the author of all. Now comes the cloudless sun, the mellow 
moon, and through the deep blue vault of heaven, we gaze 
upon those glittering worlds, clustering beyond worlds, through 
immeasurable space, till exalted .and carried through all the 
transports of thought, we are lost in the regions of immensity 
and eternity. Our summers have their refreshing breezes, purl- 
ing brooks and shady groves, where the air is fragrant with 
flowers and vocal with the voice of the forest songsters. Then 
we have our gorgeous autumn, of solemn thought and golden 
serenity. The deep azure sky, the sun-guilt clouds, and the 
leveried forest with its hectic flush and parting glories, are all 
pleasing to our senses and profitable to our untrammelled 
thoughts. Those, however, of grovelling thoughts, and who, 
like the mole, have from early life, delved in nether darkness, 
can neither see those beauties of nature, nor grant a God, who 
has either loved or done anything for us. Such men preach a 
withering curse and unceasing hatred against this, God's goodly 
world, and all that dwelleth therein. 

Now, if the principle be correct, and no one can deny it, 
that God's claim upon us for gratitude and devotion be founded 
upon the good he has done us, would not such preaching, as 



352 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

before recited, absolve us from all obligation to so arbitrary a 
tyrant who reaps where he has not sown, and demands that for 
which he has no right ? I know that it is acknowledged doc- 
trine and maxim of some sects, that God can and will do, like 
the potter, as he may please. Now take particular notice, 
reader, that this point I grant, but do at the same time 
most solemnly affirm, in defence of God's great and good name, 
that he will not, nor cannot please thus to act. I repeat it 
in shorter terms. It might seem that God can do as he may 
please ; yet it is utterly impossible from his nature, and with- 
out the loss of his best attribute, for him to please to do wrong. 
Then I again call the attention of the reader to this point, for 
upon it rests the whole obligation of God to man, and man to 
God. A father who brings his children into this world, is held 
under obligation to nurture them, and to treat them kindly. 
Much greater, then, is the obligation and responsibility of our 
heavenly father, who has brought us into this world, over 
which he has more control, and consequently can do us more 
good than can our earthly father. I ask those defamers of 
God, upon what does all obligation rest, if not upon mutual 
favor and reciprocal gratitude? God claims no exemption 
from this rule, and to give him any other, would be to charge 
him with arbitrary and tyrannical power. The father has power 
to put his children to death or cruelly mistreat them, but has 
no right thus to do, No more does God claim a right because 
of his power to neglect or cruelly mistreat us helpless children 
of his own creation. God would more quickly, than an honor- 
able man, scorn the idea of demanding something for nothing, 
or more than he granted. Now, according to the usual preach- 
ing, what can God expect from us ? He has, they say, placed 
us in this world without our knowledge or consent, and that he 
has cursed us and cursed the earth for our sake, and will more- 
over punish us with the torments of hell. Then, I ask with 
all the sincerity of truth, whether this would not be doing us 
more harm than he has done us good, and if so, it is a libel 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 353 

upon the great and good name of our beneficent father. The 
eternal punishment of all mankind in hell, for the transgression 
of the one man Adam, would be no adjustment of the offence. 
Adam himself received no disapprobation farther than to be 
turned from the garden, after which he was suffered to live 
unmolested. Having shown that God has done much for us^ 
and that his continued kindness is manifest in the daily bless- 
ings we enjoy, it follows, from the light of nature and foor 
human reason, that to serve him with all the powers he has 
given us, is nothing more than a reasonable service. Were 
our clergy thus to represent God as our kind friend, which he 
is, instead of an arbitrary and unfeeling tyrant, we should 
worship him in the true spirit of love, and not in slavish fear. 
Would to God that those gentlemen of deep learning would 
study his true character, and represent him to the world in a 
more acceptable manner, when they would have less reason to 
complain of sceptical hearers and cold members. While at 
this point, I repeat it, that the right which God holds in his 
creatures, is founded in the benefits he has conferred on them, 
and the obligation they are under to him on that account. 
That God has been self-sufficient and infinitely happy from all 
eternity, and that he did not, therefore, create man for any 
selfish purpose, but for man's own good ; that as the love of God 
for his creatures far exceeds that of a mortal parent for his 
children, it follows that in his justice and mercy, that he will 
proportion the chastisement to the transgression. That all 
punishment for punishments sake is mere cruelty and malice, 
which does not belong to the beneficent nature of God, who 
for slight and temporary offences will not wantonly torment us 
forever and forever I There is the grossest and most absurd 
doctrine taught, such as was maintained in the foregoing ser- 
mon, that we poor creatures can reach the great eternal, and 
disturb and destroy his equanimity and immutability. Hence 
the benighted and ludicrous simile, that as our punishment 
of the brute requires the punishment of ourselves, and just so 



354 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

far as God is greater than the brute, will be our punishment 
for injuries inflicted upon him, and that as God is eternal, 
oar punishment is bound to be eternal. Were I disposed to 
reason, as did this gentleman, from analogy, I would say that 
if God be subject to all the passions and afflictions of man, as 
they make him, and that he is sorely wounded by the smallest 
sin of man, it is certain that he could not have survived the 
accumulated and protracted suffering through six thousand 
years. I would, however,, say from analogy, that as man is no 
rival of, or competitor with God, that God can have no jealousy, 
envy or malice towards him, and that as God is placed so far 
above the reach of man as not to be afflicted like the brute or 
his fellow-man, by any effort of his, that no such retaliation or 
reciprocal punishment can be expected. That is : as we have 
no power to punish God, we cannot, or should not, be punished 
by him. Again, as we are mortal or temporary beings, and all 
that we can do must be equally so, it follows, as a matter of 
necessity, that our punishment must be temporary or mortal ; 
that is : that the effect will not exceed the cause. Thus we 
see the application of his reasoning. By a mere legitimate 
parity of reason, I could prove to this gentleman that he is a 
goose. A goose is an animal, yes ; he is an animal, yes — there- 
fore he is a goose. This is certainly a stronger proof than 
that, because God is unlimited, our punishment must be un- 
limited, and that as God is eternal, it necessarily follows, that 
our torments will be eternal. 

Again, that because men lash each other and hate each 
other, that God is bound to lash us, and we to hate him. And 
farther, that as man's hatred against tlieir fellow-man, increase 
with the punishment and protracted pain inflicted by them, that 
we must, from our nature, in like manner, hate God. So that, 
once in hell, for ever in hell ! And worse than this, nature, 
which God has given us, to unavoidably lead us to hell, he 
has implanted in us an unconquerable spirit, which from its 
inherent nature is forced to hate its Maker more and more; so 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON". 355 

that that Maker, who designed all things from eternity, and 
made them for that special purpose, will increase the punish- 
ment upon those fated souls, throughout all eternity. Thus, by 
comparing the mighty and everlasting Father with the tempo- 
rary doings of his earthbound and powerless creatures, and by 
preaching an abstract and apparent similitude, have they made 
the father a bloody tyrant, and sent all his children to hell for 
ever and for ever! Just as reasonable an argument would 
have been, to affirm that a whale is a large fish, and therefore 
man is to be punished for ever. Here is an undeniable fact, 
and a falsehood grafted upon it; just as in the assumption, that 
God is eternal, which no one denies, yet all deny that we are 
therefore to be eternally damned. In this mode of exposing the 
argument, I mean no offence whatever, but to show to the 
reader the fallacy of such reasoning in general, and how it is 
that Divines may compare God to the meanest of men, with 
the full approbation of a good-meaning audience. It is done 
by connecting things that have no connection — comparing things 
that have no resemblance — by making distinctions without a 
difference — and by grafting gross errors upon undeniable and 
reverenced facts! Their introduction of falsehood to their 
audience in connection with divine truths, is like the introduction 
of a doubtful character in company with a reverend friend, where 
we entertain one on account of the other. And thus it is, that 
a weak-minded and credulous audience, will swallow the most 
slanderous and ruinous doctrines, conjoined with things that 
their souls desire; just as children swallow poisons sweetened 
with sugar. I should not have dwelt so long upon this sermon, 
but to exhibit it as a fair specimen of preaching in our day, 
and to show how a man of superior mind and pure heart can 
become so stupified by abstract and metaphysical doctrines as 
to preach nonsense — yes, and highly mischievous nonsense. 

Is it any wonder that such preaching should make sceptics, 
both in and out of church ? For, be assured reader, that though 
the force of circumstances may induce men to submit to the 



356 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

dictum of creeds, that their more kindly feelings towards their 
Heavenly Father, and their better judgments throw it all in 
doubt. My God, my God, is there no truth in thy holy book, 
that can be understood by thy children, and that will unite ihem 
in one brotherhood, to acknowledge and adore thee, as their com- 
mon father and kind friend ? And 0, Almighty Father, we, thy 
humble children in search of truth, would that thy Ministers, 
claiming authority from thee, should better understand thy 
character, and preach thee as thou art, an object of love and 
adoration, and not of fear and hatred. And 0, my Father, my 
Father, my kind and constant friend, can it be, can it be, that 
thou in thy might and beneficence, hast said to the little lambs, to 
the birds of the forest, and to the beasts of the field, sport in my 
sunshine, and enjoy this my world, created for thee — and then pro- 
claim to man, made after thine own image, that their innocent guilt- 
less babes shall be torn from their mother's breast and cast into the 
burning torments of hell, and that thou shalt drag out a life of 
mourning sadness and gloom, and then to be doomed to the ever- 
lasting flames, prepared for thee from all eternity! thou, great 
fountain of love and father of all, I cannot dwell longer upon 
this horrible and revolting theme, which would shock the sense 
of justice in devils themselves, and excite that sympathy in the 
brute, which thou hast given them for the preservation of their 
young. Surely then, it must be, kind Father, as thou hast pro- 
claimed it to the world, that more tolerable will it be, in the 
day of judgment, with the infidel who denies thee, than he who 
in thy blessed name, vilifies and traduces thy character and 
drives thy children from thee. There is but little danger, as 
before observed, of one who has become familiar with God 
through his book of nature, being alienated by paper books, and 
by the schisms and isms of man. Were a thousand men to come 
to me in succession, in the name of God, and in the character 
of ministers, prophets, soothsayers, or augurers, and say to me 
that God had given his children a law without capacity to un- 
derstand it, and that he winked at our bewildered efforts to 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 351 

know his will, I would spurn them as black defamers of the 
great Eternal, who loves his children, and would that all should 
know him, from the greatest to the least. A God who would 
give to his subjects a law without the capacity to understand it, 
and make hell the penalty of not understanding it, would be 
worse than the heathen Gods spoken of by Rousseau, and quoted 
by Dr. Brown, Lecture 75. He says : — 

" Cast your e^es over all the nations of the world, and all 
the histories of nations. Amid so many inhuman and absurd 
superstitions, amid that prodigious diversity of manners and 
characters, you will find everywhere the same principles and dis- 
tinctions of moral, good and evil. The paganism of the ancient 
world produced, indeed, abominable gods, who on earth would 
have been shunned or punished as monsters ; and who offered, 
as a picture of supreme happiness, only crimes to commit, or 
passions to satiate. But vice, armed with this sacred authority, 
descended in vain from the eternal abode. She found in the 
heart of man a moral instinct to repel her. The continence of 
Xenocrates was admired by those who celebrated the debauch- 
eries of Jupiter. The chaste Lucretia adored unchaste Yenus. 
The most intrepid Romans sacrificed to fear. He invoked the 
God who dethroned his father, and died without a murmur by 
the hand of his own. The most contemptible divinities were 
served by the greatest of men. The holy voice of nature, how- 
ever, stronger than that of the gods, made itself heard, and re- 
spected, and obeyed on earth, and seemed to banish to the con- 
fines of heaven, guilt and the guilty." 

The Gods that are preached to us in modern times, are 
surely as dreadful and repulsive as those exhibited in the heathen 
mythology; and that same holy voice of nature (God) rises ui 
the human heart against them. It is by the preaching of those 
bloody, terrific, fiery, and wrathful Gods, that a terror and 
sudden fright seizes upon the masses, and a stampede is got up, 
and many are driven into the church to go through the outward 
formalities of membership. This panic, called a revival, is iden- 



358 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

tically the same revival that takes place on a burning boat, 
where all will join a church, or go through any formality to 
escape the flames. Nor would they do this, for any love or 
obligation to the boat, but to escape its burnings. And just so 
with those who are driven into the church, by preaching the 
wrath and fiery indignation of a jealous and vindictive God, for 
whom they can neither have love or respect, aside from the 
terror and slavish fear which his name excites. A convert, 
obtained in this way, is in no manner whatever improved; if a 
good man before, he is now no better, and if a bad man before, 
his heart is still unchanged. 

Here is, where the preacher, who made our torments eternal, 
because God cannot lash us into a love for him, might have 
applied this principle with more propriety, by informing the 
people, that they can never be brought to a sincere love for 
God, by threatening them with that punishment, which he af- 
firmed, as before named, will make the sinner hate him more 
and more, through endless time. For better would it be, both 
for the church and for society, were members brought in by a 
deliberate and rational examination of the subject; and by a 
full and firm conviction of the truth and justice of all God's 
demands upon us. It should be shown that God is loving, 
kind and just, that he is our universal and impartial father, 
whose watchful kindness and daily blessings have placed us 
under the most loving and grateful obligations to him. And 
thus we would not only have a kindly feeling for our benificent 
creator, but be forced to adore and serve him, not through 
fear, but love. lie has framed us as unerringly as the magnetic 
needle, in attraction and repulsion to be drawn by the cords 
of love, and to be repulsed by objects and acts of hatred. 
Having shown in the early part of this essay, that it is im- 
possible to hate an object that our heart sincerely believes to 
be worthy of love, it follows, as an axiom, that those who have 
a correct knowledge of our heavenly father, does not nor can- 
not, in the nature of things, hate hkn. It is just as natural 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 359 

for ns to love God as to love ourselves, or to love pleasure in- 
stead of pain, and gain rather than loss. It is usual to bring 
up, as an argument against this unerring and immutable law 
of our nature, that we often do things that bring pain and loss 
upon us, instead of pleasure and gain. This is all true, yet it 
is no exception to the law. A stone, when cast into the atmo- 
sphere, may meet with some obstruction and not return, which, 
by superficial observers, might seem to render doubtful the 
universal law of gravitation, yet it stands as immutable as God 
himself. We do things that bring pain upon us, and we make 
contracts, by which we lose, and are even ruined; but if we 
could foresee those results we would not thus act. The mur- 
derer knows that hanging is the result, and the rogue is not 
ignorant of the penalties of the law, and yet they run the risk. 
And why other than that they expect either to avoid the proof 
of the act, or the execution of the law. None of those acts 
would be willingly done, with the certain knowledge of detec- 
tion and of immediate death. It is an every day's remark, upon 
a misfortune or blind calculation, if the thing was to do over 
again, how differently I would act, showing that when ever 
we desert our own interests and happiness, that it is from want 
of knowledge. Hence, if we hate God, which certainly is not 
our interest, it is through ignorance, an ignorance produced by 
a false representation of our creator by his ministers, I never 
yet heard one of those ranting revivalists, who raves and stamps 
like a master at a crouching dog, or a boatswain in a storm, 
and who rudely and irreverently beats and maltreats God's 
holy book, by thumps of his fist, but what represents the 
author as an object of terror and hatred. Yes, as a being with- 
out reason or justice; one who from his wrath and in his 
might will do as seemeth him best, and that jpoor hum.an reason 
cannot call the justice in question or stay his acts. I wish, my 
dear reader, that you, who, like myself, are hastening to the 
bar of judgment, would here pause and seriously reflect, before 
you face that God, who has been so grossly slandered. And if 



360 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

a routine and man-worshipping Christian, turn, o turn with 
loathings from such degrading representations of our common 
father, and read his great pictorial book of nature, in which 
you will find a beauty and sublimity that lifts its author far 
above the vulgar efforts of man. This book is not subject to 
false translations or misinterpretations, but is written in lan- 
guage understood by all nations, and filled with illustrations 
and demonstrations of its mighty and merciful author The 
same set of defamers, not satisfied with the defilement of God's 
book revelation, have strove to depreciate his natural revela- 
tion, by deforming every charm of this, his goodly earth, and 
making of it a preparatory hell. And strange to tell, that not 
one of those divine denouncers have ever been willing to leave 
this hell, so unworthy of such saints as they profess to be. 
Here is a point, dear reader, that shows the evil of an extreme 
and false position in religion, which will always expose its ad- 
vocates to gross inconsistency in the preaching and the practice 
of it. The constant abuse of this world, which God has as- 
signed us as our residence, and the accusations against him, as 
a cruel and unfeeling landlord, who exacts from us more than 
he has given us ability to pay, is well calculated to produce 
enmity instead of love. Yes, I repeat it, and beg of the reader 
never to forget it: — That the pulpit-representation of God, as a 
being who has thrust us into this cursed world of his; that he 
has framed us with a constitution, and given us passions that 
constantly tend to destruction; that he has revealed to us a 
law so dark and mysterious, as not to be understood by the 
^oor human reason he has given us for that purpose, and above 
all, that the want of ability to penetrate this mystery is to seal 
our eternal damnation; — is an unjust and offensive accusation 
against the great author of our being, and highly pernicious to 
the happiness of man. This, as all know, is the doctrine daily 
thundered in our ears, and this is what I, again, affirm, makes 
sceptics out of the church, and desponding and unhappy pro- 
fessors in it. Why not honestly speak of God's works as they 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 361 

deserve, and thereby excite in his creatures an admiration and 
love for the kind creator and donor of so much good. I ask 
the reader of common honesty to follow me, from the towering 
Alps to the mighty cataract of Niagara, where invited on by 
the environing beauties and the smiling charmes of nature, and 
humbled and chastened by the awful sublimity of the scene 
before us, we are led to the feet of our God, there to hold sweet 
converse with him who will suffer no evil nor harm us not. Yes, 
follow me on over rugged steeps and down gentle slopes, midst 
lofty forests and through fragrant groves, into the deep dark 
and shaded dell where songs of birds, bubbling rills, and the 
cascade's roar fills the raptured soul with a devotional gratitude 
and love for our kind creator, far beyond all church-formalities 
and powers of man. Then, winding on by purling brooks, 
through flowers, meads, and over verdant plains, and where, o 
where is that deformity of earth and curse of all things found ? 
Thus travel the wide world over, and all I ask, is to give 
to our heavenly father what his numerous and pleasing gifts de- 
maud. The soul that thus appreciates God by the perusal of 
his works, will rise like the towering mountain that battles high 
through the thunder's cloud, and rears its head into regions of 
eternal sunshine, thence to look down with pity and compassion 
through the gloom and mists that envelope the struggling and 
bloody parties that are lighted only by the fires that consume 
each other. I here again and again say to you, my reader, 
whether a brother in the church or one of God's nobility out 
of it, to think for yourself, and taking the great God of nature 
for your faith, and Jesus Christ, our blessed redeemer, as your 
guide for action, and you will stand as firm and unshaken as 
the surge repelling rock, amidst the turmoil and assaults of 
vulgar isms. If the travel we have taken amidst the poetic 
beauties and charms of this little world be insufficient to lead 
your immortal soul to the kindred spirit of its father above, I 
ask you to look into the deep azure sky, and read those records 
in bold relief, that stud the mighty dome of heaven. Pass out 

16 



362 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

as a lonely and flitting ghost, which thou art, at midnight's 
solemn hush, and under natures deep and soft repose, and then 
and there, gazing upon those glittering diadems as they glance 
their rays through the solitary vast, thiuk, o think, who and 
what, and where thou art ! And if under the solemnity of the 
occasion you are not humbled down to a sense of your condition 
and obligation to the mighty maker and governor of this vast 
universe, go to the little partisan who teaches his local and in- 
ferior Gods, and his petty isms. Oft and oft in the " stilly 
night," when the moon with her limpid radiance had sheeted 
the sleeping world, have I stolen unseen and unheard to some 
solitary spot, there to contemplate in silence and alone the vast 
extent and wonderous works of creation ; to feel that I was an 
atom upon this globe that was whirling with fearful velocity 
upon its own axis, and passing its bidden round through im- 
measurable space ; to feel that I was a poor, humble and dying 
creature of a day, unknown to myself, and a stranger to all 
around. Yes, and to know, and unavoidably know, that though 
my perishing body would soon lie down with its brother em- 
mets in the dust, that I possessed a spark of deity himself, that 
soared from earth to suns, and thence to stars, and through 
regions far, far beyond our solar spheres, and that will defy the 
ravages of death and the destinies of time. 

I have indulged in some apparent digressions, to convince 
my reader of the false position taken by many of the clergy, that 
but for the revelation, handed down to us by our fellow-men, we 
never could have had the knowledge of a God, or of any thing 
superior to man. I will say, in discharging this subject, that 
if there be any set of men on earth, who deny the existence of 
a God as shown by his work, that it is these gentlemen with 
blistered feet and bruised fists, from thumping God's holy book, 
who recognize no gods but such, as can be made to serve their 
party and fill their purse. If such men would enlarge and 
liberalize their minds by the study of God's works, instead of 
devoting all their time to dead languages and the creeds of men, 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 363 

they would cease to vilify the God of their existence, and to 
preach against " moral and honorable men as bad examples in 
society." Nor would they object so much to the use of poor 
human reason, in ascertaining the relation in which we stand 
to our creator and to our fellow-man, and the duties and con- 
sequent happiness arising therefrom. 

I hold, that as God has made us superior to the brute, by 
giving us a power, called reason, by the exercise of which we 
are, as Christ and the Apostles command, to " test all things." 
The use of this test is not only sanctioned, but commanded by 
God, particularly in cases, where our soul's salvation is at stake 
In what other way, I ask, are we to distinguish the true from the 
false religions that fill the world with contending parties ? 
Though it is manifest that we cannot maintain a rational relig- 
ion without the exercise of reason, we are forbid its use under 
the penalty and charge of heresy and scepticism. On return- 
ing from church, after hearing the sermon which we have just 
reviewed, I observed to a member, how unreasonable it was to 
punish a soul through all eternity, and to increase that punish- 
ment daily, as we had just been told from the pulpit, for the 
smallest possible crime, when I was rebuked by the hackneyed 
reply : " Ah, you are bringing up your jpoor human reason 
against the power and will of God ;" as though we could 
know what the power and will of God is, without reason. 
This objection to the light of reason, first instigated by the 
Devil to keep Christians in darkness and from a knowledge of 
God's goodness and justice, was used upon this occasion to 
libel our heavenly father, and to alienate his children from him. 
In order to show this well meaning but benighted brother his 
inconsistency, I led him on, by apparently forgetting the sub- 
ject, and then speaking of doctrines that I knew he would ob- 
ject to. I asked him whether he did not think that our clergy 
indulged in too much levity, ridicule and abuse of the Catholics, 
for their belief in transubstantiation, which quickly showed, 
that but for his degraded prostitution to the idolatrous wor- 



364 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

ship of his leader, man, he would have used the divine reason 
which God in his beneficence gave to man for the investigation 
of his truth. He at once exclaimed that the doctrine was 
too absurd, even for children and idiots to believe, and that 
everybody knew that there was neither flesh nor blood in bread 
and wine. When upon my quoting the plain and positive de- 
clarations of Christ, that " this is my body, this my blood," 
etc., he again with feeling of independence and of momentary 
emancipation, affirmed that to understand it literally, would 
be too unreasonable for the belief of any rational Christian. 
I then asked him how we were to understand what was literal 
and what figurative ; which he promptly replied that reason 
and common sense must be our guide. Thus we see how big- 
otry, which is always inseparable from ignorance, may be used 
to the condemnation of truth and justice, and in support of sec- 
tarianism and selfish views. 

And thus we also see how the use of reason can be tolerated 
when it answers party purposes, but otherwise condemned as 
illegitimate and unequal to the mysteries of godliness. And 
here again we come to the doctrine, a vile relic of the dark ages, 
that a God of infinite mercy has given us a revelation or law 
which he forbids us to understand, that we may thereby be led 
into darkness, doubts, and fiery divisions, even to the burning 
of each other, that he for his own glory and the gratification of 
the elect, may lead the burners and the burnt into hell, there to 
be burnt for ever and for ever ! Just here I will ask a single 
question, for the serious reflection of the reader. AVhat is a 
revelation, if not the disclosure of that which was before un- 
known, and whether it is not the bringing of God's truth to 
light and demonstration, instead of involving them in impenetrable 
darkness and inscrutable mystery. All know those to be the 
doctrines of many of the churches, and startling and hideous as 
they may be, when plainly and honestly summed up and brought 
to view, we daily hear them uttered from the pulpit. Yes, I 
repeat it, that as defamatory and reproachful as these doctrines 



STRICTURES UPON A SRRMON. 365 

may be, to a wise, just, and kind creator and law-giver, they are 
unblushingly and openly maintained. There certainly can be no- 
thing more pleasing to Grod, and favorable to the progress of 
religion, than a free and rational investigation of those laws by 
which we are to live or die. Nor can there be a more heinous 
slander uttered agamst the Almighty maker and ruler of the 
universe, than the affirmation common from the pulpit that 
he has given to his subjects a revelation or code of 
mysteries, too deep and dark for their poor understandings. And, 
O Father, for this, they say, we are to be damned through an 
endless future ! Untrue, untrue, our ever blessed and kind 
parent, untrue. The Roman tyrant, who by way of pretext to 
punish his innocent subjects, wrote his laws in letters so small, 
and hung his tablets so high as not to be read, was not so cruel 
a monster as he whose terrors are preached to his trembling 
subjects. He whose inflexible injustice and wanton cruelty, will 
spare not even the sucking infant, but cast it into the burning 
lake because of Adam's fondness for apples I 

It is a political and moral axiom, that the good of the people 
is the supreme law, and the object and end of all human govern- 
ment. And this is equally true with God and his dear children, 
who he brought into the world for no other purpose than to 
be happy. Read what Archbishop Tillotson says upon this 
subject: — 

" That it is the goodness of God that induces him to accept 
of our imperfect praises and ignorant admiration of him. And 
were it not for our advantage and happiness to own and acknowl- 
edge his benefits, for any real happiness and glory, that comes 
to him by it, he would well enough be without it, and dispense 
with us for ever, entertaining one thought of him, and were it 
not for his goodness, might dispense the praises of his creatures 
with infinitely more reason than wise men do the applause of 
fools." 

Again, Dr. Scott says: — "That to imagine that God needs 
our services and requires them to serve his own interests, is to 



366 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

blaspheme his all-sufficiency, and suppose him a poor indigent 
being, who, for want of perfect satisfaction within himself, is 
forced to roam abroad and raise taxes on his creatures, to en- 
rich and supply himself. So that, whatsoever some high flown 
enthusiasts may pretend, that it is sordid and mercenary to serve 
God for our good, I am sure to serve him for his good, is pro- 
fane and blasphemous." 

So thus we see, that Tillotson and Scott, as well as all others 
of pious and considerate minds, confirm what I have said, that 
God is perfect and happy within himself, and wants nothing but 
gratitude from his children, a gratitude equivalent to the good 
he has done us, as to demand more would be arbitrary and un- 
just, a thing impossible with God. In accordance then, with 
this golden rule, never to demand something for nothing, a 
thing that no honorable man ever did, what is to be the result 
of such doctrines as are generally taught — that God has made 
us poor, frail, blind, and temporary creatures, and that he has 
demanded of us under the penalty of death, more than poor human 
nature is able to give. I answer that such teachings make God 
not a kind and indulgent father, but a tyrannical and hard task- 
master, who demands of his servants more than they are able 
to perform. But I ask, whence this poor dying human nature, 
and this miserable shabby world in which we live, if not from 
God ? To deny that God made man, and made him subject to 
the destinies of his nature, and that he made this world, and that 
he made it subject to the eternal and immutable laws by which 
it is governed, is to deny the existence of a God, and declare 
yourself an Atheist. God, then, is our author, and cannot de- 
mand more of us than a kind parent would of a frail and dying 
child. That he has created us in malice, prepense, or through 
his own short-sighted and vain glory, as we are taught, is im- 
possible. I hold then, that God made us for ur own glory and 
our own good, and for no other purpose. 

Let us hear what the great Divine, Le Clerk, says upon this 
subject. He observes that: — "Nothing can be more false, or 



STRICTURES UPON A. SERMON. 36t 

contrary to the nature of the Gospel, than to fancy God in part 
designed to show he was master, by enjoining some commands 
which have no relation to the good of mankind; religion was 
revealed for us, and not for God, who, absolutely speaking, 
neither wants what we think of him, nor the worship we pay 
him, but has manifested himself to us, only to make us happy." 
Hence it is said, ''the Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
for the Sabbath." 

God, I say, has created all things, and created them just as 
they are, hence if we make things and their fixed laws, give 
way to words and the assertions of men, we have no standard of 
truth or guide for action in any case. We cannot open our 
eyes in mid-day and resist the operation of light, nor can we 
avoid seeing and feeling things just as they exist around us. 
No man can thrust his hand into the fire, and by any effort of 
his will or desire suppose it agreeable or without pain, and just 
as impossible is it with a rational Christian to beheve in a mis- 
taken and degrading religion. To ask of us to give up the wit- 
ness of our senses, and to prostitute that divine reason which 
our Heavenly Father has so kindly bestowed upon us to know 
his will aright, would be to demand impossibilities. And worse 
than this, to rob us of that only gift of heaven, by the free 
exercise of which, we are commanded to " test all things," 
would be an impious sacrilege. Let us read what Charron says 
of the consequences of a blind zeal and want of reason^ upon 
the subjects of religion : — 

" Superstition, and most other errors and defects in religion, 
are, generally speaking, owing chiefly to want of becoming and 
right apprehensions of God; we debase and bring him down 
to us — we compare, and judge him by ourselves— we clothe 
him with our infirmities, and then proportion and fit our 
fancy accordingly ; what horrid profanation and blasphemy is 
this." 

I presume that I have said enough to convince the reader 
that man did not make himself, and that he had no agency in 



368 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the bestowment of th^t poor human reason, so objectionable to 
those high, deep learned gentlemen, who defame the character 
and condemn the works of their indulgent Creator, and thereby 
obtain the admiration and idolatry of their uninformed and 
gaping devotees. I have also strove to show that this world 
did not create itself, and that it is just as it is, and that it is 
exactly as God intended it to be. And farther, that any abuse 
of this world or of its daily government, is a direct and odious 
abuse of its great maker and preserver. I know that men who 
are stupified by the inscrutable depths of mystic learning, can- 
not understand this question, but I appeal to every man of in- 
dependence and of common sense, to say W'hether, if man had 
the making of himself, he would not live forever on this earth, 
and whether he would not also make himself supreme and per- 
fect in all things. Then any accusation against our fellow-man, 
because of his misfortunes or unavoidable nature, is unfounded 
and unfeeling, and a direct censure of his maker. To know 
that there is a God, and that fact, all nature as well as sacred 
record attests, that we are his creatures, and that he has done 
much for us, should seal our mouths against all censure, and 
additional and unreasonable demands. Nor is it more becom- 
ing in us to call in question the dispensations of God, than to 
revile his creatures because of the nature he has given them. 
That God who made us, best knows how to adapt this law to 
our capacity, and to proportion the punishment to our crime. 
And here I must affirm that to make a small crime equal to a 
great one, and the punishment alike unlimited and eternal, is 
to believe a part equal to the whole, a thing in philosophy im- 
possible, even with God himself. I say impossible with God him- 
self, for God cannot, without the annihilation of his own kind, 
just and holy nature, do a wrong In short and plain terms, 
it is as impossible for God to be false or unjust, as to be and 
not to be at the same time, or to make a part equal to the 
whole. God can no more be just and unjust at the same time, 
than a man can be wicked and pious at the same time. And as 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 369 

God is immutable and all time the same with him, once kind 
and just, he is always so. Then how can he, with his attri- 
butes of beneficence and equal justice, make small crimes equal 
to large ones (parts equal to wholes), and make no adaptation 
of punishment to the guilt. Now, though we see that God 
himself has not, nor cannot, without a violation of his inviolable 
laws, make small crimes equal to great ones, his professed 
ministers make them identically one and the same, both in fact 
and in punishment. Then I must again say, and say without fear 
of contradiction, that it is this making of our heavenly father un- 
true to his own veracity and long pledged justice, in order to in- 
dulge in an arbitrary and wanton punishment of his children, 
that alienates them from him. And this, I again, again and 
again say, is in accordance with the nature that God has 
given us, to love those who love us, and contribute to our hap- 
piness, and to hate those who hate us, and who make us un- 
happy. And in tracing this law of our nature, or sense of re- 
ciprocal gratitude and distributive justice, will we see the im- 
possibility of a reconciliation to arbitrary, unequal and unjust 
laws. For instance, should even the constituted authorities, 
to enact a law to punish a slight and single offence with death, 
say a burning at the stake, only for a few moments, we might 
be threatened into a trembling fear of such tyrants, as we now 
are, in regard to our Divine law-giver, but we can have no re- 
spect for such authority ; nor will a jury of feeling and honor- 
able men execute such a law. Therefore, it follows, that as 
God disdains to act the bully, in consequence of his superior 
power, and as he claims no exemption from the laws of honor 
and of common justice, the assertions from the pulpit that God 
is not governed by reason or rules of justice, and that in his 
power and wrath he will do as seemeth him best, must be held 
as slanderously false. In the maintenance of this absurd and 
forbidding doctrine, the question is exultingly asked : Has not 
God, who made man, power to do as he may deem fit with him ; 
and who has a right to call in question his holy will ? This 

16* 



370 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

triumphant argument held by the clergy, and first in the mouth 
of almost every trembling devotee, is the opprobrium of God 
and the bane of religion. I can ask with equal propriety, 
whether God has not the power to commit suicide or annihilate 
himself; yet he never has done it, and we presume he never 
will. If, however, he had undergone as many changes of mind, 
and been as versatile and whimsical as his ministers make him, 
the universe might be in danger of being left without a gover- 
nor. I grant that God could be false, cruel and unjust as man is 
prone to make him, provided he had a will so to be, but it is 
impossible for a just God to have an unjust will or desire to dp a 
wrong. Saying that God has the power to do a thing, is no 
reason that he will do it. One who is kind and without 
variableness, or shadow of change, and who made us, not from 
any selfish motive, but for the love he bore us, and for our own 
special- happiness, cannot now prove false to his own designs, 
and cruel to his creatures. Now, though reason, common 
sense, and the Scriptures prove throughout, that God is able, 
kind and just, we hear it thundered into the ears of poor 
credulous and trembling wretches, who for want of correct mo- 
ral instruction, and a just appreciation of their creator, have 
been brought under the clerical lash, that God makes no 
distinction between "the murderer and he who commits the 
smallest possible crime. I ask my reader, then, to seriously 
reflect, and like a man, to speak out from the inward convic- 
tion of his soul ; whether he can reconcile this with justice, and 
if not, whether any man or set of men, should be permitted to 
so construe God's holy, kind and just promises, as to bring 
such horrible and hateful charges against him. It is shocking 
to every sincere follower of our Lord Jesus, who forgave his 
own murderers, and took the thief to heaven by his side, to 
have him charged with unjust and wanton cruelty, a cruelty 
that has no regard to the claims of justice ; yes, a cruelty 
that neither rewards nor punishes according to the merit or 
demerit of the subject. 0, Saviour of infinite mercy, forgive 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 3tl 

those unfeeling and blasphemous teachers who crucify thee 
anew, for they know not what they do. I will here ask those 
kind and mystic expounders, who consign all but the elect to 
hell, what they have to expect from the declaration that there 
are none perfect, righteous, holy, good or just; no, not one ? 

It is to be presumed that as those gentlemen make small 
crimes equal to great ones, and the Bible says, there is none 
without crime, no, not one; that not only a part, but the whole 
of the human family was designed or foreordained from all 
eternity for the torments of hell. This is unquestionably the 
result of their own preaching. My effort, in this essay, is to 
prove the reverse of this gloomy and desponding doctrine, that 
causes many to become melancholy, and then deranged upon 
the subject of religion, while others, of stronger minds, yet 
credulous enough to believe the doctrines of the day, that God 
is not governed by the eternal rule of reason, of equity or of 
justice, but by self-interest, passion and prejudice, having 
nothing to expect from such a tyrant, defy him openly, and 
thus have many died cursing their creator. I hold that love 
and mercy are the most distinguishing attributes of God, and 
that he has imparted the same lovely quality to his children. 
We find that the natural affections of the youthful mind are: 
love to its protector, and reverence for parental authority. Nor 
is it ignorant of what is to be expected from the loving kind- 
ness of their protector. In proof of this, I here relate a con- 
versation I held with a child not eight years old. 

Upon hearing it lisp a ghost-story, so common to children, 
I remarked that the bad man frequently set such bait for little 
boys, to entrap and punish them, when he promptly and with 
an air of confidence replied: " Why, ma says, God made every 
thing, and I reckon he made the devil, did'nt he ? '^ Yes, my 
son, he made the devil. " Then he can whip him, ca'nt he ? " 
Yes, I presume, he can. " Well then, ma says, we are God's 
children, and he loves us, and if so, he will not let the devil 
have his children." 



312 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Thus we see that children commence the exercise of reason 
in early life, and that a confidence in the love and justice of 
God inclines, even the child, with a noble and manly reliance 
upon him. I contend, then, that in accordance with our nature, 
that we should be early instructed in the principles of a rational 
religion. The child should be taught that God is our universal 
father, and that he loves us dearly. That he is all powerful, 
and that, if we love and obey him, he will not suffer any power 
on earth or in hell to afflict us. A child, thus growing up under 
a full and firm conviction of God's loving kindness and pro- 
tective power, will never offend' so good a friend, and will be 
prompt, like the little boy above named,, to defend his character, 
as a dutiful child will an adored parent. He would not sorrow 
as those who are without hope, nor would he feel gloomy, de- 
pressed and dispirited like those under a slavish and degrading 
religion. He should be taught to stand erect, in the image of 
his God, and to feel the awful responsibility that attaches to 
his high and immortal destiny. He should feel that he is a 
child of supreme and infinite beneficence, and if unoffending, an 
heir of eternal felicity. Yes, and he should know that God has 
. created him a rational and accountable agent, and that he will 
demand nothing of him beyond his capacity to understand and 
ability to perform, that he does not sport with his children, by 
giving them mysteries as their guide, and by placing stumbling 
blocks, such as our expounders are, before them, that he is not 
responsible to man, nor to any of his conventional creeds, but 
is accountable to God, and to God alone. Thus panoplied with 
love and inspired by the moral dignity of his nature, he would 
stand equally invulnerable to the tricks of the devil, and the 
ungrounded threats of God's vengeance; nor would he craven 
to the cavils of infidelity and the sneers of the world. That 
dark and gloomy compound of ignorance, fanaticism and hypo- 
crisy would vanish before the fight of reason, and the soothing 
blandishments of nature's holy truths would soften the harsh 
and destorted features of that puritanical piety, so reuulsive to 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 313 

the simplicity, buoyancy and natural promptings of the youth- 
ful and innocent heart — yes, innocent as it is fresh from the 
hand of God, and as pure as the mind of its great designer and 
kind protector, having yet been uncorrupted by prejudiced and 
false teachers. We should no longer abuse God and all his 
works. We should not vilify this God's world, as badly made 
and ignorantly governed, nor would we degrade his people to 
the level of 'ill-shapen pottery. ^N'o, nor would we teach the 
most dangerous of doctrines, that man is wholly unable to do 
either good or evil, but as God or the devil may whimsically 
prompt him, but we would hold him responsible for his own 
acts, as a rational, moral and accountable agent. I say, it is 
taught, that man of himself can neither do good nor evil, but 
as God shall aid and approbate, for the rule, if just, should 
work both ways, and surely, surely, there can be none so 
hideously daring as to reproach God with giving us a natural 
proneness for, and ability to sin, and withholding all power to 
do good. None will dare deny that this is a doctrine daily 
heralded from the pulpit, and it is one that has sent millions upon 
millions to hell. Men are satisfied to go on in sin, saying that 
they have no power to do good, but as sights shall appear, and 
the holy spirit prompt them to it. And to fix this doctrine 
upon the young and credulous mind, the examples of David, 
Solomon, and Paul himself, who was suddenly forced, when 
upon a mission of wickedness, to become a Christian, are 
brought up as examples. 

Yes, and worse than this, we hear it preached, as before 
related, that there is more hope for the blasphemer and mur- 
derer, than for the rational, thoughtful and moral man. And 
why ? The simple and legitimate answer, in accordance with 
such hell-peopling doctrine, is this: — That the conscientious 
and moral man depends too much upon his own poor human 
reason and power to do good, while wicked men wait patiently 
for the holy spirit to do it for them. And what the result ? — 
many go on sinning to their grave, and cursing their creator 



3T4 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

for his partiality in eleciting or forcing some to be good, while 
he designed them for hell, and forced them on to destruction. 

But to go back to the teachings of this essay. The sons 
of clergymen, who are notoriously refractory and dissolute, 
would be rationally reared to the love and obedience, both of 
their heavenly and earthly fathers. That which they feel as a 
brutal and unnatural restraint to the innate and innocent crav- 
ings of the youthful heart, they, for some time, bear with silent 
and sullen hatred to the authors of their oppressed and afflicted 
souls ; but soon and they break through all restraints, and ever 
after abhor religion as a system of unjust and cruel oppression. 
Those are undeniable facts and speak volumes upon the subject 
of early training. We should recollect that children are child- 
ren, and that they are fresh from the hands of their Creator, 
just as he made them — that he has given them sensibiHty and 
reason — and that he has imbued them with a spark of his own 
Divinity, called conscience, which leads them to a knowledge 
of his existence and of his protective power. Yes, and which 
enables them to feel and know when the laws that their Creator 
has given them, for their preservation and happiness, have been 
outraged or violated by a despotic and arbitrary power. Know- 
ing, as we do, that nature is nothing more nor less than the crea- 
tion and will of God, we should be cautious how far we go in 
our prejudices against and opposition to them. We might with 
no less impious imbicihty, condemn the laws of the vegetable 
and mineral kingdoms, as that of the animal — yes, and with 
equal propriety oppose the laws that govern the heavenly bodies, 
as those that govern mind. God, as before maintained, made 
man, not with any side view or selfish motive, but that he might 
be happy, and hence the wise and beautiful design and perfect 
adaptation of all our senses and bodily susceptibilities for enjoy- 
ment from the appropriate objects around us — as the eye for 
light, the ear for sound, &c., &c. Then, as our enjoyments are 
indicated by the laws of nature (God), and founded upon the 
eternal reason and order of things, we should not be so ungrate- 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON". 3t5 

ful and puritanical in our abuse of youthful and innocent amuse- 
ments. In as much, however, as the world is governed more by 
the mystic authority and arbitrary assertion of man, than by the 
simple laws of God, and the wisest arguments that can be 
urged, we will cease to reason, and give some authority that 
now occurs upon this subject. As man was made for his own 
happiness, and as benevolence is a distinguishing attribute of 
his Creator, every effort we can make to increase the amuse- 
ments and add to the happiness of our fellow-man, is an act of 
benevolence, and will meet with the approbation of God, as a 
legitimate and virtuous act. 

Pope, in his " Universal Prayer," says that: — 

*' God is paid when Toaii receives : 
To enjoy is to obey J' 

Young, author of " Night Thoughts," says: — 

•' The love of pleasure is man's eldest bom, 
Born in his cradle, living to his tomb, 
Wisdom her younger sister, though more grave. 
Was meant to minister, and not to mar. 
Imperial pleasure, queen of human hearts. ^' 

Again, Dr. Young says: — 

*' Not to turn human brutal, but to build 
Divine on human, pleasure came from heaven. 
In aid to reason was the goddess sent, 
To call up all its strength by such a charm. 
Pleasure first succors virtue; in return. 
Virtue gives pleasure an eternal reign." 

" Is there no play. 
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour. " 



Finally, (for we might greatly extend those quotations,) 
Pope says, upon this subject: — 

" To wake the soul by tender strokes of art. 
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; 
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold. 
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold; 



8TG MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

For this the tragic muse first trod the stage, 
Commanding tears to stream thro' every age; 
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept, 
And foes to virtue wonder how they wept. " 

Then it does appear, by reason and by authority, both hu- 
man and divine, that as God has made us for enjoyment, it is 
as sinful to suppress or murdet rational pleasure, as to punish 
ourselves or to commit suicide. And thus we see that those 
puritanical and misanthropic doctrines, which I have strove to 
expose, are offensive to justice, subversive of reason and of hu- 
man happiness, incompatible with the universal and eternal re- 
lation of things, contrary to the laws of our nature, and conse- 
quently to the will of our Creator. Hence we see, that those 
who preach such doctrines, neither live up to their precepts them- 
selves, nor so change the nature of others, as to enable them to 
do so. And, therefore, it is, that those who preach more than 
they practice, bring the charge of inconsistency and hypocrisy 
upon the Church, greatly to the injury both of religion and of 
the well-being of society. We should take things then, as God 
has made them, and not as we in our imaginations, would have 
them. The Clergy are as false to truth, as the writers of novels 
and the authors of romance, in creating an imaginary and arti- 
ficial standard of perfection, not to be found in the lives of the 
most perfect of men, and which, consequently, has not been 
given by our Creator to man. Yes, they sternly proclaim an 
ordeal test, that neither they as rational and human beings, nor 
even the suicidal Hindoo, or most phrensied and fanatical 
Christian can perform. And thus it is, that the Clergy run 
counter to the will of God, do injustice to themselves, make 
sceptics of the world, and bring disgrace upon the Church. 
Hence it follows, as an axiom, founded upon the universal, im- 
mutable and unavoidable structure of man, that he was designed 
by his Creator, more for happiness, and for the enjoyment of 
this Satanic world, than for sadness, sorrow, and suicide. And, 
further, that God has not cursed us without as much as an 
alleged crime, and cursed all creation on our account. The 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 3*1 T 

good book tells us, that, " God saw every thing that he had 
made, and behold it was very good." — Genesis, chap, i, ver. 31. 
Is it probable, then, or even possible, that a consistent and 
immutable God, once pleased with his works, as above seen, 
should so quickly prove inconsistent and mutable, as to fall 
out with them, and to maim or destroy them ! And equally 
unreasonably is it, that an infinitely wise God, who foreknows 
all things, and who consequently knew Adam as well before his 
creation as after it, should be so short-sighted and unwise, as 
to be disappointed and fretted at the defect of this his first 
man, and to damn all creation on his account ! And above all, 
that a just God should be so unjust as to doom us to misery in 
this world, and to consign us to ultimate perdition, because of 
his man, Adam's, fondness for apples ! Adam could not have 
been corrupted by education, for he associated with none but 
his Creator. Why, then, attribute all our defects to poor old 
Adam, as he, when fresh from the hands of his maker, was 
equally defective, or like ourselves subject to temptation ? 
This condemnation by Adam is greatly harped on by those 
whose selfish vanities (instigated by Satan), induce them to 
believe that they are favorites of an impartial God, and con- 
sequently exempt from such sin. This is said to be a deep- 
grounded and grievous sin to all but the elect, who teach that 
God, in consequence of the apple transgression, under which 
he suffered Adam to live and propagate this sin to his posterity, 
swept the whole human family into hell, from the days of Adam 
up to the coming of Christ, say a period of four thousand years ; 
and from that time up to the present not less than nine hundred 
and ninety-nine in a thousand have gone to the burning lake ! 
Such, in sooth, has been the perplexing and incurable nature 
of this case, that the learned clergy have been put to their 
wits ends for a remedy ! Teaching, as is still taught, that God, 
having no sympathy for his millions of suffering infants, nor 
any power to save them from hell, those very kind guardians 
of God's bereaved and orphan children determined to take 



378 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the matter into tlieir own hands, and save them from eternal 
destruction. Holding, as is yet held, that being conceived in 
this wool-died and indellible sin, which nothing but dipping, a 
doubtful sprinkling, or some preparation of holy water, could 
possibly wash out, I say that the great prelates of this little 
world set their wits to work. This learned and grave body of 
God's sovereign interpreters of a language which he himself 
could not make intelligible, met at a place on this speck of the 
universe, called Sorbonne, in the year of our Lord 1253, then 
and there to determine upon a remedy for God's want of fore- 
sight, wisdom and goodness in the management of his own af- 
fairs. And then it was, that the celebrated enama edict was 
instituted. This solemn body, in the wisdom of their council 
resolved, that the mother should be injected, per vaginam, 
with holy water, for the awakening of the soul and the conver- 
sion of the cmhryo-s'pirit. This was to be done at the period 
of quickening, when it was supposed that the sinful soul of the 
infant entered the body ; bat with what instrument this inject- 
ing was done, is yet a secret. Those high, deep learned Divines, 
being satisfied with their effectual remedy, did not determine 
whether God hourly creates those sinful souls as they may 
be called for, or has kept them from creation, ready made ; or 
perchance, whether they have not been independently and re- 
belliously wandering through space, amidst the warring ele- 
ments, waiting for the sinful body to be ready for their recep- 
tion. Their mystic learning did not enable them to elucidate 
this theological enigma to the satisfaction even of our most 
matured and thoughtful souls, which have no consciousness or 
recollection of any prior or separate existence from the body. 

I have somewhat digressed to show to my readers, what I 
proposed in this essay to do, convince them of the uncertainty 
and even danger of biblical learning, and great men so called, 
who serve only by their ridiculous disputes, to render the word 
of God doubtful, and by getting up parties and self-worshippers, 
to distract the church. la returning from this learned com- 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 319 

mentary or rather sortie of the clergy upon Adam and his 
creator, too sacrilegious and degradingly ludicrous, either for 
the credence or tolerance of a pious and well-balanced mind, 
we again affirm that God has not cursed us and all his works, 
on Adam's account, and consigned us to sadness, to sorrow 
and to suicide. We should not, then, ungratefully reject the 
rational pleasures and amusements of life, for which he has 
created us, but cheerfully accept of his goodness, and like his 
inferior, but more grateful creatures, bask in his sunshine and 
enjoy the many blessings which he has so bountifully spread 
around us. Parents should be cautious not to contract their 
children's minds, by taxing their memories with useless partic- 
ulars and learned nonsense. Nor should they render them mi- 
santhropic and forever averse to the expanded and noble prin- 
ciples of true religion, revealed by our common father for the 
benefit of all his children, by teaching a partial and unmerciful 
God, who has given to his creatures a law far beyond their 
capacity to understand, and who winks at their ignorance and 
glories in their destruction. On the contrary, the youthful 
mind should be liberalized, enobled and elevated to God him- 
self, by an early instruction in the gloriously sublime and un- 
mistaken works of his vast universe. This would subdue our 
vain glorious pretensions to mystic power, humble our pride in 
petty primer learning, and bring us with a sense of our little- 
ness to the feet of the merciful, the mighty and eternal God, 
who neither works as a botch in the potter's trade, nor condes- 
cends to serve a party. The cultivation of the mind by the 
study of nature and the sublime wprks of our creator will assist 
its creative powers, multiply its images and correct and refine 
its conceptions. It will tend to produce that refinement of 
sentiment, dehcacy of taste, elevation of soul and glow of af- 
fection which form the polish of the heart, the finish of mental 
character, and the best elements of personal and social happi- 
ness. One, thus trained up with chaste and sublime conceptions 
of his creator, and consequeutlv disgusted with the conventional 



380 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

dogmas and vain and silly parade of man, with his liable 
churches, rich robes, and all the satanic paraphernalia of 
human pride and man-worship, feels no privation in retiring 
from such a scene of rival and envy to the silent and solemn 
shades of some unfrequented and sacred forest, there to com- 
mune alone with the author of his being. 

Thus have I endeavored to show what I set out to do, why 
it is that the clergy so constantly complain, that there are so 
few of the community professors of religion, and that those 
who are, fail to live up to the standard of their profession. 
I have said that it was mainly owing to the subject being so 
presented that no thinking mind, without a violation of those 
sacred and adored principles upon which his salvation depends, 
could embrace it. Who, T ask, after robbing God of his lovely 
attributes, rejecting his kindly gifts, and slandering the great 
author of nature, by the abuse of his works, can face him in 
the day of judgment, with the plea of justification ? How, then, 
I farther ask, can any man of sound principles and a just 
appreciation of our creator, subscribe to such doctrines ? I 
repeat it, that there is no man of sane mind and sound prin- 
ciples, freed from an education in party-dogmas, and who has 
been brought into the presence of, and rendered familiar with 
the infinite beneficence, creative might and eternal majesty of 
the one supreme, can ever submit to the interpretations of the 
day. The clergy themselves have left the -inexhaustible foun- 
tain of pure and living waters, and hewn out to themselves 
fountains, yes, broken fountains that will hold no water. In- 
stead of devoting their time to science, and pursuing the laws 
of Jehovah, the author of our being and great law-giver of the 
universe, they constringe, epitomize and stultify their minds by 
the study of dead languages, and abstract and destracting 
alchemic creeds, in which no two Divines agree, to find out the 
root of religion, which is simply in the heart, and the same in 
all ages, nations, and languages, to the utmost bounds of God's 
vast domain. And worse than this, having deserted and con- 



STRICTURES UPON A SERMON. 881 

demned science, (the laws of God,) the great fountain of knowl- 
edge and wisdom, to dabble in theological enigmas and conven- 
tional dogmas, they become demented and demonized, till hav- 
ing lost all charity and kind feeling for others, are now pre- 
pared with the most vindictive and fiendish feelings of human 
depravity, to drag each other to the tortures of the stake. 
This, with all its minor grades of enjoined faiths and intolerant 
isms, is called religion, and if it be so, God forbid that I should 
ever be possessed of such religion, I would prefer murder and 
highway-robbery, as less cruel to my fellow-man^ and more ac- 
ceptable to my creator. 0, thou great fountain of love, of law, 
and of order, if those who sacrilegiously take upon themselves 
thy holy name, were to study thy laws and know thy will, in- 
stead of devoting their lives to words without meanings, and 
distinctions without a difference, to distract the mind and 
alienate thy children from thee; they would have no occasion 
to slander thee and condemn thy laws, as many of them do. 
Were those leaders of parties and disturbers of society, those 
defamers of nature and false interpretors of God's will, to study 
the laws and see the order of his material universe, they would 
be unerringly and irresistibly lead to him, as the wise designer, 
kind creator and supreme governor of all. And were they to 
study the laws of mind, they would know that God has never 
made two minds to be one and the same, or any more alike 
than faces and physical forms. Then seeing all this as clearly 
as we do, and sincerely wishing for the well being of society, 
and the happiness of our fellow-mortals, we ask, yes, ask and 
again ask, by the authority of human reason, and in the name 
of divine truth, how it is to be expected that all minds can be 
moulded into one, any more than the features and bodily struc- 
ture can be transmuted from the form that God has given them. 
how rebeUious, then, to the will of God, and how cruel to 
man to murder him for an unavoidable and honest difference 
of opinion. God, then, free us from an early and fatal educa- 
tion in party-dogmas, and lead us by the study of nature, and 



382 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the grandeur and sublimity of her laws, to see thee as thou art, 
the creator of all, and the common father and steady friend of 
man, and to know that thou hast designed us for happiness 
here, and for immortal bliss, when we shall have passed from 
this world, and for ever bid adieu to the scenes of time. 

Great father of life and of every good, 

Thy name will I defend, 

And pleased with this world that gave me birth, 

I'll praise it to the end. 

And when to earth these eyes I close, 

In dark and endless night, 

Lord, wilt thou my vision fit, 

For world celestial bright. 

And when this throbbing heart shall cease, 

And soul and body part, 

Then vrill I see thee face to face, 

And know thee as thou art. 



REVIEW. 



[This Keview was intended as a preliminary article, but has 
since been written out as a Review.] 

I MUST here say to the reader, that though I have written 
a book, I have not intended, till very recently, ever to publish it 
to the world, fearing it might give offence to many of my best 
friends — persons for whom I have a sincere regard, as men of 
enlarged minds, kind hearts, and of true piety, and, above all, 
faithful laborers in the cause of religion. To avoid such re- 
sults, I commenced my essays by circumlocutory and hypocritical 
evasions, thinking that my kind feelings and pure intentions 
might excuse me in the eyes of my Creator, but feeling the 
criminality of my deception, and seeing the ambiguity of my 
style, I resolved to speak out as my feelings might prompt me, 
not designing in any instance to be either sectarian or personal, 
for that is far, yes, very far, from my kind intentions; aiming 
only to show the fatal tendency of the doctrines taught by the 
Clergy, without accusing them of any personal or conscious 
guilt. I am willing to say that every man who professes a 
separate code of morals, or a party creed in religion, is honest, 
even to the creed of Brigham Young, and yet I feel at liberty 
to strike with all the force of language I can command, against 
the various party creeds and confessions of faith in religion, as 
destructive to religion itself, and destracting to the harmony and 
well being of society. That the Hindoo, who crushes himself 
under the wheels of a man-created God, is sincere, there can be no 
doubt; and that the Mussulman, «rho dies with religious heroism 
and exaltation at the canon's mouth, is equally sincere, there 

383 



884 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

can be as little doubt; but it is very certain that neither honesty 
nor martyrdom constitutes any part of true and rational religion, 
for that would be to put all religions upon an equal footing, 
there being no religion without its martyrs and honest members, 
which devotees, by the by, will doubtless receive, from the 
searcher of all hearts the reward of their honest exertions in 
the cause of religion. It is not the simple hearted sincerity in 
religion that I condemn, but the chimeras of presumptuous learn- 
ing and the crushing despotism of party creeds and theological 
formulas. I should feel just as safe under the hierarchy of 
Olympius, or the Pontifity of Kome, as within the pale of Pro- 
testant dogmatism, with its imperial sway of bigotry, arrogance, 
contradictory hypotheses and bitter enmities. 

I shall show in the following essays, that the very term of a 
separate doctrine in religion expresses a doubt of the truth of 
religion itself; for how can there be divisions and opposing 
doctrines about a matter so plain and self-evident as to admit of 
no doubt. That two and two make four, and that the whole 
is greater than a part, admit of no doubts, or divisions of creeds, 
or separate doctrines upon the subject; much less can such 
obvious facts harrow up those foul and fiendish passions that 
cause the professors of religion themselves, to torment and 
even destroy each other. My position is, that the Bible is what 
it purports to be, the Word of God, and as such, can give no 
countinuance to the ten thousand opposing, impossible, irrecon- 
cilable, dividing, and destracting creeds and confessions of a 
false faith. For all religions on earth, of whatsoever kind, 
must be equally true and safe, or there must be some one which 
is true and genuine, making all others false and counterfeits. 
The clergy have fought with fire and fagot over these distract- 
ing creeds, till like the Killkenny cats, there is nothing but the 
dislocated and lacerated remains and tail end of religion to be 
found amongst their dead symbols and arbitrary formalisms. 
My teachings will be, that God has not intended to sport with 
the salvation of man, and consequently, that he has in good 



REVIEW. 385 

faith and in full accordance with the meaning of the Word, re- 
vealed to us his law, which law, as it binds his subjects eternally in 
hell or heaven, must have been suited to the capacity of the most 
humble and uneducated on earth — as to be poor, humble, and 
uneducated is no crime. Besides, we are all the children of 
God, over which, as an impartial and just God, he must have 
constant care and equal love. To say that God has given us a 
mysterious law, not to be understood by those who are hgld re- 
sponsible to that law, is to make God a greater tyrant than 
the bloody monster of Rome, who published a law not to be 
understood that he might put his unoffending subjects to death. 
It must then be, that God has made his law plain, and it is only 
by the pretended learning in mysteries, and the bigoted arro- 
gance of the pigmy, man, who comes to his craven and credul- 
ous fellow, which makes that law doubtful and of non-effect. 

If things amongst men can be made plain, how much more 
simple and plain should God make his law, which binds, as I 
have said, the eternal destiny of man. My object, as I shall 
often repeat, is to show that God has revealed himself in a 
manner so simple, as to be understood by every creature on 
earth, and when not understood, the fault is not in God, but in 
man, who has always strove to make the people believe that 
they can explain things, which God himself could not; I say, 
which God himself could not, for otherwise, he would be culp- 
able of an obvious neglect, just as much, and even more so, 
than an earthly law-giver, who could, but would not make his 
laws plain and intelHgible to his people, that a set of expound- 
ers and impostors might rise up and live upon their honest la- 
bor. In answer to this solemn and startling question, I have 
heard it most slanderously and shamelessly heralded from the 
pulpit, that as God had power, he had a right to reveal his 
laws intelligibly or mysteriously, as might suit him best. This 
doctrine, most abhorrent, both to reason and justice, is every day 
taunted against poor human reason. The parent has power 
over his child, therefore a right to maltreat or put it to death 

n 



386 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

at pleasure, and just so with all power, or might, making right. 
The idea of the Clergy in this case, is precisely that of an Irish- 
man who was brought before the Court, in my presence, for 
beating his wife to death ; who pleaded, in justification of the 
act, that a man in this free country had a right to do as he 
pleased with his own property, and, for sooth, the man appeared 
to act with conscientious sincerity, in believing that might gave 
right,, so much so, indeed, that he evinced an indignant surprise 
at the Court's interference with his domestic and private rights. 
Were God, as repesented by his ministers, devoid, like our 
earthly tyrants, of all just principles, he might make just or un- 
just laws, as best suited. his vile passions and sordid purposes, 
but as a God, with the attributes constituting a God, it is im- 
possible, in the nature of things, for him to pass an unjust law, 
or act in any way but in accordance with the pure and holy 
principles of the eternal Godhead. To act with duplicity, he 
would not be an honest God, and to act unjustly he would not 
be a just God, so that to act because of a physical ability, is a 
gross idea, and morally impossible, as for God to do so, would 
be to annihilate his own attributes, and, consequently, be no 
God. It will be shown in many parts of this work, that all 
God's purposes are under the fixed and eternal law of moral 
necessity, and in this position I am sustained, not only by the 
sacred and immutable principles of truth and justice, but by the 
authority of Clark, Dick, Chalmers, and many other able 
Divines. 

To speak of a revelation from God, which is a mystery, is 
a gross and mischievous solicism, the very word revelation 
meaning the disclosure and explana,tion of mysteries or things 
before unknown, so that if there be any mysteries in the Bible 
essential to the salvation of man, it is not from God, the foun- 
tain of love, of mercy, of truth and justice, but the fabrication 
of blind and selfish men, who have quarreled and fought like 
demons over what is and what is not a revelation. Strange 
and startling, indeed, are these melancholy and momentous 



REVIEW. 38 Y 

facts, which should make every man of mind to think for him- 
self Those Divines, who profess to explain mysteries to the 
demented masses, are the very men who take issue with each 
other, and have caused nine tenths of all the vile bigotry and 
cruel persecutions in the church of God, where instead of lov- 
ing each other as themselves, they hate each other as they do 
the devil himself Yes, such has been the fiendish feelings of 
those expounders of mysteries and leaders of duped and de- 
graded parties, that they have broiled each other alive. Ab- 
horrent and infamous, indeed, must be such pretenders in the 
sight of a just and holy God, whose loving kindness and simple 
word is thus perverted to the most basely, cruel and selfish 
purposes. 

That there is truth and divinity in the Bible, no man can 
doubt, but that every upstart and leader in opposing creeds, 
are the teachers of that truth or in the line of their duty, is 
impossible. Truth is a unit, and consequently not the subject 
of contradictory creeds and party theology; and if the Bible 
be the word of God, it should not, with impunity, be subjected 
to the vile prejudices, and to the ambitious and sordid pur- 
poses of men. 

Knowing that men's morals are formed by education, and 
reading nightly, as I do, in our daily news columns of the 
alarming increase of fraud and crime in our land, I have felt it 
my religious duty to use my feeble effoi'ts to bring about some 
reform in the systems of education, and knowing farther that 
our moral sense of duty, and religious views of right and wrong 
are the main springs of human action, I have spoken largely, 
pointedly, independently and, I think, justly upon that subject. 
Yes, and knowing, moreover, as every intelligent man must 
know, that Islamism makes an honest community, while 
Christianity makes it dishonest, and being well assured that 
the great amount of corruption in this Christian community 
cannot be from the practice of Christianity or the precepts of 
the Bible, but from their false teachings and formal professions, 



388 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

I have strove, even by hard, and, they may think, rude shak- 
ing, to awake the ministers of the gospel to their grievous 
errors. They are the privileged and exclusive teachers who 
give tone, both through our schools and from the pulpits, to the 
moral sentiments of the people, and more particularly to the 
rulers of our country, and hence it is that I have felt at liberty 
to address the clergy, more especially, upon the subject of 
education, and in so doing, I wish it understood that 1 have 
not designed to accuse any one of crime or intentional wrong, 
but am willing to say, God forgive them, for they know not 
what they do. We know that whole nations may run greatly 
astray, from long habits of error, without being conscious of it, 
and all past history shows this fact, for an illustration of which 
we have but to go a step back to Greece and Rome, where 
wiser heads than ours worshipped at the shrine of the most 
corrupt and despicable Gods that ever disgraced the name of 
religion, and the Protestant world will readily grant that 
Christianity under the Papal hierarchy, was a bhght upon the 
soul, and a curse to the moral government and well being of 
society. Luther, it is said, has greatly bettered the condition 
of the Christian world, but I am sorry to say that the question 
whether Christian unity, piety, and morality has gained any- 
thing from the efforts of Luther, must be left to the tribunals 
of justice to decide. In tracing the history of man in all his 
varied conditions, physical and mental, through the melancholy 
and mouldering ages of the past, I have not had time to dwell 
or space for details, in consequence of which, my style may 
appear both erratic and deficient in its relations, and in fact, I 
have attempted no artistic or studied style, pursuing rapidly 
my own reflections, and aiming only to make myself understood; 
and if the reader will impartially compare my teachings with 
his own experience, he will find much that is valuable and true 
in my meditations, both of the past and the present condition 
of man ; and in regard to my arguments, particularly under the 
head of volition, he will find them unanswerable, and not that 



REVIEW. 389 

I claim to be superior to all other men, but that I follow 
nature, and have the author of nature and of truth upon my 
side. It may seem inconsistent in a Christian to speak with as 
much ironical levity, as I have done in many parts, but it is 
done to render the ridiculous ideas of men, if possible, more 
ridiculous. 

It is well known from long experience, that superstition and 
the love of the fashions and customs of a country can never be 
cured by reason, and that ridicule is the only remedy. Cer- 
vantes might have gravely reasoned through a thousand 
volumes, without affecting the deeply rooted and chivalrous 
habits of knight-errantry, whereas, by a single little volume of 
satire he reformed the world, and rid it of such follies. It 
must be understood, however, that when I speak of such like 
things as Adam's fondness for apples, giving to the Bishop of 
London alone half a million of dollars annually, and to the ag- 
gregated clergy of the wide world countless millions of the 
people's hard earnings, that I neither blame these great magii 
or medicine men, as our Indians would call them, for accepting 
of their salaries, as it furnishes them with good wines, nor the 
people for paying them, as it is easier to buy religion from the 
Pope and the vicegerents of God, than to obtain it from God 
himself by an arduous and unprofitable life of honesty. These 
are human taints and tendencies of which the world is full, 
and whether it be of a deeply grounded and incurable nature, 
or an adventitious trait from corrupt examples of pretented 
high and holy sources, is not yet known, some authors contend- 
ing for a total and incorrigible depravity through God's blind- 
ness and Adam's sin, and others for a fortuitous and more 
hopeful prospect for human nature. Knowing as I do, that it 
is detrimental to the honesty and well-being of society to shift 
all the blame from ourselves and putting it upon God and his 
first man Adam, whom the sinful and selfish world has made 
the scape-goat of all their crimes, it will be found that I con- 
tend throughout for the wisdom, power, and purity of God ; 



390 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and farther, that his perfect pre-science has never permitted 
him to bring any thing into existence which he did not purpose 
so to dO; and consequently, that he has never been disappoint- 
ed in any of his works, and whined and pined and fretted, 
like a child or a botch mechanic, as many high and holy digni- 
taries of earth would make the mighty God of this vast and 
harmonious universe do. But go on, to read my book 
through, and you will find that there is no defect in God, and 
that man has only been made defective by superstition and the 
worship of men, who pretend to a divine and mystic knowledge 
far beyond the allotted capacity of ephemeral man, who has 
ever been dissatisfied with God and with God's appointments. 
And hence it is that I aim to show that our creator has given 
us ample capacity to understand everything appertaining to 
our health and happiness, and that is only by transcending 
these limits in search of supernatural and forbidden things, 
that we have made ourselves unhappy, and attribute it all to 
Adam and to Adam's Maker, who, our mystic leaders say, got 
mad at his own Wind mishaps, and cursed us, and cursed all he 
had made beyond his own power to redeem us. This gross 
solecism and libelous personality against our Creator, I also 
show to be the result of the false teachings of men, who strip 
God of his best attributes, such as wisdom, goodness, and im- 
mutability, and invest him with their own vile blindness, malice 
and petty passions. To make the preachings of the day con- 
sistent, it would be equally as just to hang a man for his form 
of person or the color of his hair and eyes as to hang him for 
murder, as they are both alike entailed upon us through our 
forefathers, and consequently- unavoidable. If neither God or 
Adam made us sinful by nature, we can no more help sinning 
than we can help having two legs instead of four. 

The greatest possible evil to society is the idea entertained 
through the pulpit, that God has left man free to sin, but has 
deprived him by Adam's sin of all possibility of doing any good, 
but as the spirit which seems to have deserted our country, 



REVIEW. 391 

may whimsically fancy to force him. And thus do men under 
this belief go on sinning to their very graves, and often in de- 
spair have they been known to curse their maker for his 
partiality in forcing others to heaven, while they were fated to 
hell Tliat there is more crime in the world at this time than 
there has been at any other period in the history of man, I 
cannot doubt, and that the divisions and distractions in the 
church of God are daily becoming greater, no reading and ob- 
serving man will deny, which shows the necessity of some re- 
form, and with a view to which reform I have bestowed the 
exertions of what few hours I have had to spare from the most 
onerous and incessant out-door labors, which fact may excuse 
my incoherent and hasty style. 

Knowing that most of persons view every attempt to a re- 
formation or improvement in the established customs of relig- 
ion, as an opposition to religion itself, I have thought it well 
to say, that as modern religion had become so incumbered, like 
modern music, with arbitrary variations, as to be in danger of 
losing both body and soul, that my aim and only aim is to 
restore it to its apostolic simplicity. The formal and fashion- 
able religion of the day may bloom, but can never bear ; nor 
is it possible that the vain glorious pomp and glare, so pleasing 
to the eye of artistic taste, can ever satisfy a sincere and pious 
soul. The study of psychology has forced upon me the con- 
viction that the human mind, if free from the fetters of super- 
stition, and the local and petty trash of our modern schools, is 
capable of that vast expansion and elevation which would 
quickly lead it to the very throne of God, its author, and the 
great fountain of all power and wisdom. The mind's soaring 
into the nebular regions of immensity on the wings of gravita- 
tion and the curbing of the lightning from heaven, and sending 
it across vast oceans, at its bidding, are but small items withiu 
the sphere of its mighty powers. Yes, and with a conviction 
as clear as that of my own existence, do I affirm that God has 
given to the human soul a capacity to ascend from effect to 



392 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

cause on and on through an endless series of gradation and 
perfection. But alas, alas, how this spark of divinity, this 
light of the world and heir of heaven, has been stifled and per- 
verted to the vile and sordid purposes of ambitious and mono- 
polizing parties. To know this melancholy fact, we have but 
to look back at the degraded condition of mankind through all 
ages of the world. 

The march of time brings up in review before us, even at 
this late epoch of the world, nine tenths of the human family 
manacled by the debasing power of superstition. Two thirds 
of our race are now kneeling to the worship of thirty-two mil- 
lions of God's, manufactured by the single man Confucius. 
Passing by the millions of deluded beings, whose brains have 
been addled and whose eyes are turned to the machinations 
of Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Mahomet, and the Pope; we may 
gaze with sad reflection upon our own distracted and warring 
parties, each blind and ambitious leader crying aloud to the 
silly and divided flock, this is the way and that the road to 
destruction. My object is to break the bonds of this idolatrous 
and degrading man-worship, rouse the soul from its mystic 
lethargy, and point out to it the road to its high and immortal 
destiny. I have rebelled against" the supreme command of 
vulgar prejudice, and solemnly rebuked those aggregated and 
guilty forms of human creeds and craft, abhorrent to reason 
and loathsome to the taste of an unperverted, free and elevated 
soul that has become refined and assimilated to its maker b;^ 
the study of his noble works. I have also ventured to cdndemn 
the arts of refinement, and the pomp and pride of wealth, as 
calculated to lead to an extravagant and criminal waste of 
God's gifts, and to harden the heart against the wants of 
others and the acts of charity. Vanity and self-gratification, 
by long habit, blunts our sensibilities, and debases the soul to 
the lowest and grossest sensuality. The corrupting influence 
of vanity has become contagious, even in the Church of Christ, 
where instead of that warm-hearted, brotherly love and sincere 



REVIEW. 393 

piety, we find a heartless formality and despotic sanctimony 
which spurns the old-fashioned and simple-hearted devotion as 
weak-minded and of low degree. We no longer find amongst 
professors that tender and generous soul, ever responsive to the 
woes and wants of others, but in its stead we see the cold and 
disingenuous heart which loves not its neighbor as itself, but 
envies his prosperity. The unholy desire of praise, and the 
eager clutch of venality concentrates every feeling in the me, 
the adorable self, while humility, meekness, charity, disinterested 
love and the other Christian virtues are wholly forgotten. A 
lordly style, it matters not how obtained, commands respect 
under our present and degenerate forms of society, while the 
story of Lazarus and Dives, in the book of our faith, is looked 
upon as the idle stories of Miinchhausen. And thus it is that 
vanity and lawless ambition have ever been the greatest enemies 
both to morality and religion, for the exposure and condemna- 
tion of which, if formidable enough to be noticed, I shall doubt- 
less be harshly dealt with by the corrupt and paradeful age in 
which I live. Holding, as I do, that we have no more right 
to abuse the blessings God has given us, by arrogantly assum- 
ing his holy name, than we have to come in the name of the 
Devil himself, and this fact it is that I aim to make plain to 
the reader who may have been lead unconsciously astray by 
false teachers, who come in the name of God to divide and dis- 
tract his people. The blackest crimes ever committed on earth 
have been done in the name of God, and the most licentious 
and debasing systems of religion have also been got up and 
sustained by the use of his holy name. Let the public, then, 
be aware to trust no pretended learning and mystic mummery, 
but to rely upon theu* own common sense and that divine reason 
which God has given them as their only safe guide amidst the 
turmoil and contradictory disputations of the blind and pre- 
sumptuous leaders. They who cry Lord, Lord! and pray aloud 
upon the street-corners and house-tops, are not the Lord's, but 
they who sincerely and humbly doe their master's will, and 

17* 



394 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE 

not in the fashionable and velvet-cushioned churches alone, but 
in the closet, the open fields, or in the silent and meditative 
forest, where God in his own sacred fanes and peaceful solitudes 
holds sweet converse with every sincere soul, that will spurn the 
ostentatious arrogance and artistic dogmas of erring man, and 
seek him where he may always be found, amidst his own unmis- 
taken and glorious works. 

That God is the author of nature, that God is our author, 
and that he is our only dependance for temporal good and 
eternal salvation, no honest man will deny, and why, then, look 
to man, who is here but a day, for anything beyond his dying 
good will. Thirty millions of our fellow-mortals pass from this 
stage of action annually, while nations rise and sink, like bil- 
lows of the troubled ocean, and are lost through endless ages, 
while the earth " abideth forever." We should not, then, look 
to dying man for the greatness and goodness of God, but to 
his own mighty and imperishable works. If the reader whose 
soul has not been contracted to a nut-shell, by the petty isms 
of theology and the dry and drivelling details of our schools, 
will contemplate those solemn and majestic piles, as the Andes, 
the Alps, and the Apennines, that tower to heaven and repose 
their hoary heads in regions of eternal sunshine, he will feel the 
might and awful majesty of that God, who is not the tool of 
-a party, nor the meagre and gossipping God of our little creed- 
makers, but the great and august Jehovah, the maker and the 
manager of the mighty universe. Thus elevated, chastened, and 
prepared to enjoy nature, the works of almighty God, let him 
cast off the pulpit slanders against the God of nature, and fol- 
low me to the mighty cataract of Niagara, where the congre- 
gated waters of ten thousand streams rush like mountain-waves 
down the rocky declivity, with maddening fury, and plunge from 
an awful hight headlong down into a deep, dark, fathomless, 
and foaming abyss, over which is ever seen suspended in the 
trembling sun-beams the unbroken and everlasting covenant 
of God, and where in the deep and solemn tones of thunder 



REVIEW. 



395 



that shake the solid earth, his voice is ever and anon heard, 
and he will look with compassionate contempt npon the be- 
nighted and degraded condition of man, blinded as he is to the 
light of reason and the God of nature, by the teachings of his 
fellow-mortals, and debased below the dignity of an immortal 
soul, by their mystic mummeries and man-worship. The pupil, 
thus initiated into the beauties of nature, and the powers of 
God, may pass on from this sublime scene of solemn meditation 
into the softer and more placid retreats of this God's goodly 
garden. His footsteps may stray from rugged steeps to gentle 
slopes, by gushing fountains, through warbling wood-lands, and 
over flowery meads and pearling brooks, and where, o where is 
that blighting curse which God, on account of the apple, has 
put upon all his works ! 

Tiie soul, now freshly emancipated from the atrocious and 
oppressive dogmas of party, may, like the noble eagle, sit free 
from his dirty cage, breathe the pure and untainted air, and 
luxuriate amidst the calm and soft delights of kind and gentle 
liiature. Invited on through cooling and sequestered vales, 
where whispering pines spread their fragrance upon the passing 
breeze, and murmuring rills wind slowly on with a lullaby, 
sweet as angel whispers, to the meditative and pensive soul, he 
cannot but feel the presence of an all wise and superintending 
providence, where no vulgar brawl of party with the fiery malice, 
of devils, and passions foul as hell are allowed to mar the 
sacred harmony of these hallowed retreats. Here, in the full 
fruition of God's glorious works, far removed from the sweating 
toil, vain glorious ambition and vengeful passions of men are 
lulled in profound silence and soothed by the placid hand of 
Tiature, is the soul left free to commune with its God. No fiery 
feuds or distracting creeds here disturb the anxious mind, but 
soft as infant's breathings come the wooing zephyrs freighted 
with incense from Flora's enchanted bowers, where the muses 
tune their lyres, and the sylvan deities their vigils keep. 
The student of nature, after having cast off all ma^^-cyeated 



396 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

gods with their vindictive malice and contemptible jealousies, 
brawls and disgraceful bickerings, and communed with the 
kind, adorable and eternal God of nature in his own sacred 
temple and peaceful solitudes, as related above, may now take 
his second lesson, which will farther convince him of the blind 
and bigoted folly of man, and lift his soul far above the sordid 
strife and petty party dogmas of this world. Let his emanci- 
pated and immortal soul gaze through the telescopic eye which 
God has aflSxed to his marvelous frame work, upon that glori- 
ous orb of day, the radiant crown of creation, as he dispenses 
light, warmth, and life to every living creature on earth, and 
with a power far beyond all human conception, holds a firm 
and eternal grasp upon those mighty worlds that whirl with 
lightning speed around him, and he will with rapturous adora- 
tion cry out with the inspired writer, " Thine, O Lord, is the 
greatness, and the glory, and the majesty ; for all that is in 
Heaven and earth is thine. Lift up your eyes on high and be- 
hold who hath created these things, who bringeth forth their 
host by numbers : — I, the Lord, who maketh all things." And 
again, " We know God," says the Apostle, " by the things that 
are made." 

Yes, and far, far beyond the region of our solar spheres lies 
open before us the resplendent and boundless empire of God, 
where we may gaze through the blue depths of immensity upon 
a mass of globes in the canopy of heaven, that will equal thir- 
teen hundred and twenty millions of worlds of the size of our 
earth. Yes, yet and again, far, far beyond the utmost stretch 
of mortal vision, the enraptured soul, though winged with di- 
vine meditation, is lost in the stellar and nebular regions of 
immensity, and left to contemplate the might and majesty of 
the great Jehovah, and the inconceivable extent and the efful- 
gent splendor and unspeakable glory of his vast universe. 
Lessons like these will give to the man pufifed up with petty 
party-creeds and technical dogmatisms a crushing consciousness 
of his own exceeding littleness and contemptible imbecility 



REVIEW. 39t 

The contemplative soul may return from the interminable 
regions of space to view our own globe in its ceaseless rounds, 
presenting alternately every portion of its surface to the great 
central luminary, and rushing through trackless space with a 
velocity two hundred times greater than that of a cannon ball, 
freighted with seas, rivers, mountains and forests, and spilling 
not a drop of water, nor disturbing a tender shrub. Thus 
that God has done all things well, and that he has intended us 
to be happy, instead of miserable, as is preached, by vain glori- 
ous little demi-gods, all nature cries aloud. The blessings he 
has so profusely spread around us are too numerous for denial, 
except by a soul perverted by man worship, and stultified by 
the dry and drivelling details of our modern institutions. 

The pupil, in order to farther enjoy God's natural blessing, 
may gaze upon our glorious luminary as he slowly and majesti- 
cally sinks beneath the western horizon, and spreads his parting 
and gorgeous rays upon the quiet sky, and turning to the east, 
behold the queen of night in full orbid glory mount up the blue 
and spangled arch high into the celestial spheres, there to meet 
the starry hosts and illume the mighty dome of heaven. And 
now it is, that under the legendary power of the scene and the 
solemn hush of the sleeping world, when the moon has shot 
forth her beams to the uttermost parts of earth, and sheeted 
the silent forest with her liquid radiance, the man who has a 
soul to feel must recognize an all pervading and ever present 
superhuman power, that lifts his thoughts far above the grovel- 
ling machinations of man. It is under such circumstances, and 
in the home of the fabled deities, as wood-nymphs, fairies, and 
light-heeled specters, which are seen to dance upon the tremb- 
ling moonbeams, and sport through the leafy forest, that the 
poet seeks his inspiration, and the man of sentiment enjoys his 
purest thoughts. 

Space has not admitted of but a faint and imperfect view 
of the rich and inexhaustible fields of nature, and I have given 
it simply to show that the condemnation of God's dispensations 



398 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and the representation of nature as unworthy of our respect, is 
false in fact, and an unpardonable slander against the God of 
nature, under whose kind protection we live, move and have 
our being. The vast array of resplendant glories seen in the 
celestial realms of infinity, have not yet been scanned, nor have 
the recondite and unfathomable depths of nature been revealed 
to view. Yet the human mind, if freed from the dwarfing in- 
fluence of modern education, and put to early training in the 
laws cf nature, it would prove ample for the development of 
her every phenomena, which the myS'tic recluse and technical 
pedagugue can never know. The guileless and guiltless soul, 
if kept as pure and unsullied as it comes fresh from the hands 
of its creator, would turn as naturally to him as the needle 
turns to the pole. But alas ! alas ! how soon does the cere- 
monial and arbitrary teachings of selfish and bigoted man pol- 
lute and pervert that soul to the basest of purposes — the pro- 
fitable and imperious sway of party. 

That men have put their own words into the mouth of God, 
is too obvious for denial, and that they have claimed to be, not 
only the interpreters but the executors of those words, is equally 
obvious. My position is, that God has not left the stupendous 
issue of man's eternal destiny to the hypotheses ' of schools and 
the formulses of bigoted and narrow minded sects, but that re- 
ligion consists in a tie between the soul and the God who made 
it, which no mummery of man can improve, and no power on 
earth or in hell can sever. The Bible abounds in a language 
so figurative, as to allow every upstart in religion to select such 
parts as may best suit his blinded bigotry or sordid interests, 
and thus it is that religion becomes polluted, not by the word 
of God, but by the arbitrary words and despotic rule of men. 
My neighbor Shakers have a Bible of their own, equal in size 
to the old, and almost forgotten Bible, out of which ten thou- 
sand more recent and admired revelations have been manufactur- 
ed, called creeds, confessions of faith, &c., &c. The great book 
of the Shaker creed, is called the Divine Manifesto, in which it 



REVIEW 399 

is satisfactorily proven to those honest people, that the sin of 
Adam was not in eating an apple, which they think ridiculous, 
but that his crime was in his sexual commerce with Eve. They 
hold that no one but God has a right to make people, and 
hence it is, that they strictly and conscientiously prohibit every 
effort of the kind. Brigham Young's, or the great and Rever- 
end Joe Smith s creed, also taken from the old Bible, holds to 
doctrines exactly the reverse, and enjoin it upon the Latter-day 
Saints, as a religious duty to manufacture as many bodies as 
possible for the habitation of those surplus spirits that God has 
made and set afloat in search of tenements of clay, which they 
fancy to seek as a shelter for the time being. This Mormon 
doctrine, or creed, is certainly more rational, kind, and humane 
than that of Mother Ann Lee, in as much as the latter permits 
those naked and shivering souls to howl and shriek in the 
winter's blast without a feeling of sympathy, or the slightest 
act of pleasing and easy labor, which would give them a home 
and a shelter from the warring elements. 

I have just finished reading a new and celebrated book 
equally as learned and large as Joe Smith's creed, or the Shaker 
Manifesto, entitled " The only Creed to Salvation," which also 
professes to be taken from the old Bible, to prove the Calvinistic 
Church to be the only authorized church of God, and, moreover, 
that God has, all for his own glory, destined nine-tenths Df his 
own offspring, those created by himself, to the endless torments of 
hell. I have said that this book or these books, for there are 
many of them, are as learned as the Shaker Bible, and, indeed, if 
possible, more so; in as much as they go back beyond the date 
of time, and long, long before Adam's pollution with Eve. Yes, 
for sooth, if dates can be found in the realms of eternity, those 
learned Divines have got them, by patiently searching the re- 
cords of countless millions of ages, and penetrating along the 
lengthened vista of time into the dark, silent, and solemn 
abodes of past eternity, there to find upon the tablets of the 
eternal Godhead the fixed and unalterable destiny of man. 



400 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

From the dates, beyond which no creed can claim, and from an 
authority that none can gainsay, does the doctrine of election 
claim its unquestionable superiority. The works, as I have said, 
upon this creed, are very learned, but had they annexed to them 
Holy Willie's prayer, as recorded by Robert Burns, their mean- 
ing would be more fully understood. Holy Willie praises the 
Lord for making of him an exalted example, and thanks him 
for sending one to heaven and ten to hell, all for his own glory, 
and not for any evil they had done him, &c. 

But we will go on to few more creeds, out of the countless 
numbers that hang upon the poor old Bible, like morbid excres- 
cences, till they have well nigh destroyed its vitals. The Epis- 
copal Church claims through a long and illustrious array of 
bishops, an exclusive supremacy, while the Pope proves, de- 
monstratively, by the most learned Divines on earth, that he 
holds the keys both of heaven and of hell. The Baptist's creed, 
it is well known, condemns all sprinkling and pouring as a crim- 
inal evasion of the Bible command, as a mark of Church mem- 
bership. And thus it is that, as a distinguished Divine says, 
those warring and vindictive creed-makers, spit hell-fire and 
damnation at each other. These learned works, so falsely called, 
are not the works of God, but the little tricks of little men, to 
no one of which a great or good man can subscribe, without 
condemning all others, or granting all others to be equal to his 
own, and in that alternative there could be no rational choice of 
any man creed, so that when we come to investigate the creed- 
making system fully, we are disgusted with all human creeds, 
and forced to fall back upon the plain and simple commands 
of God himself. 

Now in this wild confusion and Bedlam of babblings, I think 
that the Catholic Church has decidedly the advantage, both in 
Divine learning and in canonical authority. But my ground- 
right and eternal stand-point is, that they are all wrong, and 
that the simple and unmistaken precepts of Christ, and his pure 
example, if strictly followed, are ample for the salvation of every 



REVIEW. 401 

creature on earth. And farther, that the vanity of man and 
the pride and ambition of party have been the bane of disin- 
terested and humble piety, and the opprobrium of religion. 
Could I have my will, and God knows, my sincere wish, it would 
be to give the clergy less labor and more religion. But alas ! 
alas ! this I fear cannot be, for what sort of figure would a 
preacher cut before a fashionable city audience, with the simple 
sincerity of the Apostles, and with pretensions no greater than 
that of Christ. And, above all, who, with the paradeful pre- 
tentions and artictic taste of modern times, would pay a salary 
for a service that every sincere and pious Christian could perform. 
It is lamentably true, that in order to obtain an admired name 
for deep learning and mystic powers, we are forced to vail our- 
selves in sophistic and degrading ambiguities, and to put on a 
studied dignity, galling and humiliating to the inner soul which 
is concious of its own hypocrisy. And from this ignorant, arti- 
ficial and corrupt state of modern society, it is, that Doctors of 
Divinity as well as Doctors of Medicine are, from the necessity 
of a living, compelled to dissemble, or in vulgar terms, humbug 
the people. 

A friend of mine, very recently, told me a good anecdote 
in full illustration of this grievous fact. The first physician in a 
certain case, was discharged by his patient, because he was 
honest and plain enough to tell the patient that he had a sore 
throat, and the second doctor having some hint of the fact, 
answered the sick man, when questioned, .that his case was 
highly abnormal and had degenerated into Synanche Tonselaris. 

" Doctor !" cried the patient, " do say that word 
again." 

** Why, sir, I said, that you were at present laboring under 
Synanche Tonselaris." 

" Why, think Doctor, that fool told me that I had nothing 
but a sore throat, and I told him I had no use for such a dunce. 
Doctor, what did you call it ?" 

" I told you sir, in plam terms, that the morbid condition of 



402 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

your system was obvious, and that it had terminated into Sy- 
nanche Tonselaris." 

" doctor, it must be a monstrous bad complaint, think you 
can cure me, doctor." 

" Now, though your diagnosis is clear, your prognosis is 
doubtful, yet I think that by prudent care, and skillful treat- 
ment you may recover." 

" O, well, doctor, do stay all night, and I will pay you any- 
thing you ask me." 

Thus was the honest doctor sent away without compensation, 
when the other by a pious fraud got a fat fee. The vis medi- 
catrix naturae, with a dexterous use of such high sounding and 
charming words have made many a quack rich. 

If asked why or how calomel purges and tartar pukes, no 
honest answer can be given, other than that God has made 
them so to do, but this would be too honest, and, consequently, 
unsatisfactory; therefore, we answer with some semblance of 
wisdom, that one acts by its cathartic and the other by its emetic 
powers. Opium produces sleep by its soporific quality, and grass 
green by its vegetative power. Flat truisms can never obtain 
cast, or collect tythes from the masses, and hence the necessity 
of mystery, by the aid of which elaborate arguments as well as 
splendid sermons are made up. This peiitio prindpii, or begging 
the question, is just as common amongst Divines, as amongst doc- 
tors and canting demagogues, each making the most of their capi- 
tal in their own way. The Divine proves God to be eternal, by 
assuming the position that he is without beginning and without 
end, and, therefore, eternal. These are contemptible sophisms 
and shallow shifts, by the aid of which many a man is worship- 
ped, and many a living obtained from the labor of the silfy and 
servile community. If asked why we have two legs instead of 
four, common sense would answer, simply because God made us 
so, when the people's learned expounders would say, because we 
are bipeds and not quadrupeds, that is, we are what we are, be- 
cause we are what we are. 



REVIEW. 403 

Now, though the examples of deep learning, as above given, 
may seem ridiculous, thej constitute almost the sum total of the 
mystic and farcical learning of the day, called polemic or con- 
troversal theology. Modern theology is made up of words 
without meaning, and of learned distinctions without a differ- 
ence. Thus, I hope, it may be seen that my object in rendering 
the vain pretentions of man to mystic learning, as ludicrous as 
it really is, is to open the eyes of the reader to what constitutes 
unsophisticated morality and simple and sincere piety in religion. 

Party creeds and controversal theology are certainly stumbl- 
ing-blocks in the Church of God, for it is very obvious that 
except unity and plurality, discord and harmony can be recon- 
ciled as one and the same, this affectation of learning in Divinity, 
which produces all the party creeds and discord in the Church, 
must be condemned, and if, on the contrary, they can be recon- 
ciled as one and the same, and of equal efficiency in the sight 
of God, it follows, as a matter of necessity, that the clergy are 
criminally in fault in pretending any superiority of creed, and in 
their shameless abuse of each other in maintaining false creeds 
and misleading souls. 

It is usual for leaders of parties, when charged with enter- 
taining an unkind and persecuting spirit, to affirm that there is 
no difference amongst Christians, when the fact is so plain that 
none but fools or knaves, would spend their whole lives in hot 
disputes about nothing, or in support of a mere verbal difference. 
And now, as we cannot charge the clergy with being either 
knaves or fools, their only escape from this dilemma is for them to 
grant the fact, when they say that there is no difference in the 
warring creeds of Christians, that they do not mean what they 
say. It is also common, yes, too common, for superstitious and 
idolatrous professors to arrogantly lecture their neighbors for 
not joining the Church, when no honest man, of enlarged and 
elevated soul, could, without violating every sound principle of 
Christianity, subscribe to the articles of any one creed, those 
creeds being not the word of God, but the fabrication of erring 



404 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

and ambitious men, who in different ages, in different countries, 
and even in the same little neighborhood, have their own little 
and contracted views of what constitutes religion. 

Now I will grant that the professor, who aims to proselyte 
all around him, is honest, yet it is more than probable, that the 
man he solicits is a better Christian than himself, in as much 
as he eschews all human authority and worships God in true 
spu'it and in truth, not according to the Gospel by Calvin or 
any other man, but according to the Gospel of Christ. Re- 
ligion, in my opinion, is the simplest thing in the world, re- 
quiring no ostentatious displays or artistic formalities, but a 
mere sincerity of heart, for the precepts of Christ and his meek 
and humble life are such as to ask for no creed makers, or learned 
and rhetorical flourishes, or vain and fruitless disputations. A 
man may be just as good as he wants to be, without joining 
any party of men, just as a man may be as sober as he wishes 
to be, without joining a temperance society. Yes, and in like 
manner may a man be a charitable and kind-hearted man, with- 
out joining either the Masons or Odd-Fellows; yet I do not 
object to church or to any other human fellowship, as it does, 
by vanity and worldly pride, induce many a man to act up- 
rightly and honestly, whose defective heart would otherwise 
prove delinquent. 

But it may be, and, indeed, often is said, that though all 
creeds may be in error and an evil, that there is a choice of 
evils, and that we should, therefore, join some one church-party, 
which position I would hold to be legitimate, were all the 
foundations of piety based upon factitious and false creeds, but 
as we have the plain and unmistaken words of Christ, and his 
pure and unaffected example before us, I hold it to be a direct 
insult to God to ask man for his adverse and distracting inter- 
pretations, or submit to his sectarian vanity and despotic rule, 
and hence it is, that men of enlightened and enlarged souls, 
who know God through his mighty works and unmistaken 



REVIEW. 405 

words, feel it a degradation to submit to the arbitrary and 
vascillating follies of man. 

And now I ask in all sincerity, what virtue there is in the 
mere formality of joining a church, and whether a good man 
out of the church is not a good man, and a bad man in the 
church a bad man, and whether rehgion consists in human 
formalities, or in a secret and unostentatious tie between the 
heart and its God. And again, whether there is any more 
meekness, moderation, charity, honesty and true piety in the 
church than out of it, and in truth, whether there is not more 
worldly pride and vanity in a modern church than out of it. 
Our village churches are substitutes for the theatre and opera 
of cities, where the apeing community go to catch the fashions, 
and the members of churches being as much infected by the 
contagion as any, crowd the front ranks. Enter a modern 
fashionable church, and there you see the fine preacher, not in 
sack-cloth and ashes, but in costly linen and fine broad-cloth, 
nor does he deign to speak in that simple and unsophisticated 
style of Christ and his apostles, but divides and subdivides his 
subject, and enters so deeply into abstract and metaphysical 
refinings as to make himself mysteriously unintelligible to his 
audience, and thus obtains the reputation of deep and mystic 
learning, which never fails t( secure the largest salary. This 
man's members are hke himself, (to be pitied, for they mean no 
harm,) as fully puffed up as Satan himself could desire, with all 
the vain glorious parade and show of this world. Were rail- 
roads to fail in their useful purposes, not a hoop could be spared 
from the church, nor is there a fashionable professor, from the 
prelate's wife or daughter down, who would shed one out of 
the many cumbrous skirts to cover a poor and shivering fellow- 
mortal. Christians, in their chase after the pampered harlots 
of Paris, who give tone to fashions, and in their worship of 
Count Dorsay, the paragon of folly, seem to have forgotten the 
Bible account of creation, which makes Adam the common 
father of the human family, and that we are all, whether poor 



406 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

or rich, brothers and sisters, who have a rightful claim to our 
kind sympathies and a j^ortion of the blessings which God has 
bestowed upon us. If the means used in costly corsets to choak 
God's vitals and degenerate the human family, and the pon- 
derous skirts that weigh down many a poor wretch to the 
grave, and I fear to perdition, was used in charity, to elevate 
the poor orphan and afflicted of our race, to a high standard 
of intellectual and moral perfection, O what brotherly love, 
harmony and happiness might prevail in the human family to 
the frowning down of all vice and unchristian fashions and 
customs of our country. Then, indeed, should we truly live 
under a republic, instead of a frowning aristocrasy, then, too, 
would the enlightened and emancipated soul commune freely 
with its God, instead of being proscribed by the formulary 
edicts of a pompous and oppressive hierarchy. 

We have but to read the past history of the world to see 
how the clergy, when they once get firm hold upon the people's 
purse, are prone to indulge in all manner of worldly extra- 
vagances, and though the people in this country exercise more 
freedom and independence, both in thought and action, than 
the more priest-ridden countries, they are gradually being 
wound up, thread by thread, as the spider binds his prey, and 
to this there should be no objection, were there any religion in 
it, but as it leads both to the destruction of religion and the 
damnation of souls, every sincere and pious Christian should 
guard against its insidious and baneful influence. I know a 
prelate, who but recently left his flock unprovided for in New- 
Orleans, because he could sell them the Gospel for no more 
than ten thousand dollars a year, when Christ and his Apostles, 
doubtless equal to this preacher, though not esteemed as such 
bj^the people, gave the Gospel free of charge. Yes, but Christ 
making no great display in the world, could claim no great 
salary, besides which he used the Gospel for the good of souls, 
when now-a-days it is claimed as a monopoly of the clergy, sold 
to the highest bidder, and appropriated to the secular benefit 



REVIEW. 407 

of their divine and adorable selves. This same great Divine 
strove to get up a literary institution in New- York, the fee for 
session to be six hundred dollars, thus excluding the poor, and 
thereby establishing an aristocracy, which our country, as he 
maintained, was old enough and rich enough to support, and 
that we had just as good a right to such noble distinctions as 
other countries. 

These are startling facts that should sink deep into the 
heart of every man who wishes his country well, for though 
they may seem but trifles unworthy of notice, they are like the 
infection of a fatal disease, or the little sparks that consume 
whole cities. But then, there is no cure for the slavish masses, 
who with credulous heads and craving hearts have ever sub- 
mitted with implicit obedience to the despotic rule of their fel- 
low-mortals, instead of looking to God with a firm faith and 
Cliristian heroism, as the only high and holy object obedience. 
Fortitude to resist the corruptions introduced by high digni- 
taries into the church of God, is the brightest jewel in the 
Christian's crown, and 0, how many for the want of it fall into 
the degrading and sinful habit of man-worship ; for what is 
man but man, and what man who is worshipped, is better or 
wiser in matters of true piety and devotion, than the wretch 
who worships him ? Schisms and contentions in the church of 
God we know to be the Devil's rich harvest, and yet do 
the clergy sow all the seeds of this contention, and thus unin- 
tentionally become Satan's most efficient servants, and God's 
great enemies. 

Love, the source of our redemption, and the golden girdle 
that should bind the church of God and world of mankind into 
one harmonious whole, is broken into ten thousand pieces by 
vain-glorious creed-makers and the leaders of faction, who have 
been the authors of more infidelity and vice, than all other Sa- 
tanic influences on earth besides. The blackest crimes and 
most cruel and damning deeds of men, have been committed by 
devils in human form, who have come as agents of God and 



408 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

rulers of the people. The hearts of such fiendish monsters have 
been steeled against the sad lament of the widow and the or- 
phans piteous cries, nor could the pious prayers and humble 
supplication of the poor and unoffending victims save them 
from the broiling coals. I do not refer the reader to the 
butcheries of Mohamet, and other religious leaders of the world 
in general, but to those foul, fiendish and fearful monsters who 
come in the name of our meek, lowly and loving Jesus, to di- 
vide, distract, and cruelly mistreat the church of God. Heart- 
burnings, bickerings, and sectarian hatred has ever been the 
result of our learned and controversal divinity, and yet strange 
to tell, the unthinking and credulous masses in trembling doubt 
and in misery and despair, hug those very chains that bind 
them to their eternal doom. The firm and unflinching Christ- 
ian will hold in contempt the shallow and ever shifting opinions 
of men, and taking the unraistaken and granted words of 
Christ as their faith, and his pure life as their unerring example, 
fear nothing from the combined powers of earth and hell. 
This doctrine I know to be odious, inasmuch as it depends 
upon God instead of man, but be it so, as I have but little to 
expect from men here, and nothing whatever through the end- 
less ages of eternity. If there be a God, that God will surely 
reward those who defend his church from foul and fatal infec- 
tion, and himself from gross slander, by those who take the 
words from his sacred records, and garble them to suit their 
own base and ambitious purposes. Subterfuge is the only 
refuge for sectarian Christianity, and it can no more flow from 
a sincere soul, than hatred can flow from the fountain of love. 
Double dealing, though the fashionable religion of the day, is 
the invariable index to a base spirit, which seeks the honors 
of the world and the plaudits of man more than the secret ap- 
probation of its creator ; and though the spirit of truth is 
known to dwell in meekness and unaflfected piety, it can never 
gain cast in what is falsely called the higher and better circles 
of fashionable life, where a hollow-hearted and formal profession 



REVIEW. 409 

constitutes the summura bonum of religion. Though Christ 
was born and reared in poverty, religion in low and uncultivat- 
ed life now-a-days is worth nothing, yet when tested by the all- 
seeing eye, is found to be as pure as the fountains that gush 
from the wild and uncultivated mountains, while the stagnant 
and boasted pools of the cultivated fields are filled with filth 
and sedimental impurities. One is of nature, and the other of 
art ; one of God, and the other of man. To preach the simple 
and good old fashioned gospel of Christ before a modern con- 
gregation, would be to throw pearls before swine, as in such 
circles the pampered and sensual soul has lost all relish for 
heavenly food, and seeks nothing beyond the smiles of the 
pastor and the formalities of the church. The pugilistic who 
comes fresh from his thorough training in party creeds, and 
prepared to meet and batter down all opposing creeds, is the 
preacher for the people, and they will neglect all other duties, 
and go hundreds of miles to listen to their billingsgate abuse of 
each other. If all Christians agree, as it is very common for 
professors to falsely assert, why should those unbrotherly, un- 
christian, yes, and I may add unhallowed controversies have 
taken place between Campbell, Rice, Percel and others of our 
own vicinity, to the disgrace of the peaceful church of Christ, 
and the disturbance of good order in society. And now, this 
is the reason I insist that Satan, the grand adversary of 
Christ, was the first author of the creeds of Christendom, for 
the purpose of dividing his flock, and to make enemies and 
persecutors of each other, and that in order to carry out his 
wily purposes, he next established theological institutions, 
where his troops were to be trained to fight in the name of 
Christ against each other, nor does he care how much they 
abuse him in the mean time, so that he reaps his harvest from 
their dissensions. To illustrate the unquestionable fact, as here 
maintahied, let a sceptic attend and take down the testimony 
in those theological debates, and he will prove from their own 
assertions that every word in the Bible is false, as forsooth, 

18 



410 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

each creed proves every other to be false, and in turn is proven 
by every other to be itself false. Hence it will be seen by the 
observing and honest reader, why it is that I suppose the 
Devil to be at the head of all these bickerings, heart burnings, 
revengeful feelings and persecutions in the church of God, for 
it is very certain that God himself can neither instigate nor 
approbate it, thus leaving no alternative authority as I have 
said, but the Devil himself for such fiery feuds and hellish 
agencies. And I am here charitable enough to admit, that 
when the preacher asks from the pulpit why it is that the 
world is daily growing more wicked, amidst our churches and 
literary institutions, he is ignorantly innocent of the insidious 
and unconscious influences exercised by himself, through the in- 
strumentality of the wily old serpent, who seduced God's first- 
born, and has held firm hold of those who have appeared in his 
name, from that day to this, thus securing to himself, accord- 
ing to the theological and learned hypotheses of the day, at 
least one million of God's beloved children, for one, whom God 
has been able to save for himself. 

And now, it is not the Bible itself that leads to all these 
ludicrous and disgraceful disputes, but the misinterpretation of 
it, by pretended learning in divinity, and I would not expose 
such pretentions to the public, mischievous as they are, were 
they not heard in the pulpits and daily seen upon the streets, 
and hence, 

It cannot be faulty to repeat 

A dialogue that walks the street, 

Or can my gravest friends forbear 

To laugh when such disputes they hear.'*' 

Feeling as I do, the criminality of every evasion in thought, 
word or deed, in the teachings of morality, I have spoken in 
plain terms of those bloody and fiendish sectarian leaders, who 
have made man the greatest enemy of man, destroyed the unity 
of God's holy church, and brought religion into doubt and dis- 
repute. The name of devils certainly cannot be too harsh a 
term to aoply to them when in their hideous and heart-sicken- 



REVIEW. 411 

ing deeds, they have broiled each other alive, and devils could 
certainly do no more. All history, both sacred and profane, 
testify to the most vindictive and horrid butcheries being com- 
mitted in the name of God ; and what is shocking to the sensi- 
tive soul, and degrading to the honor of man, is tliat those san- 
guinary monsters have become the demi gods of party. 

Now, though every sentence in the following work is intend- 
ed to support religion, morality, law and order, and to contri- 
bute to the happiness of man, I have had to attack vulgar 
prejudice in its stronghold, and consequently may expect much 
stir among the yellow jackets and ant's nests around me ; but 
I cannot more than be put to death, as was Christ in his efforts 
to improve religion — suffer the fate of his Apostles ; swallow 
the poison with Socrates, in defending the honor of God, and the 
dignity and the rights of man ; or to be anathematized by an 
earthly and despotic hierarchy, and degraded before the delud- 
ed masses as a heathenish infidel and enemy of religion, as 
was Luther for his god-like fortitude and noble efforts in eman- 
cipating and elevating the enslaved and degraded soul of man. 

It might appear vain and ridiculous in me to bring up these 
parallels in connection with my little book ; but as the great 
Amazon, the sire of rivers, is made up by the aggregate con- 
tribution of small streams, and reforms and revolutions are ia 
like manner brought about by the combined power of human 
opinion ; I feel that I may contribute my little part, hoping 
that thousands of others may rally to the standart of morality 
and good order, and hurling from power all sectional dema- 
gogues and sectarian demi-gods ; thus save our country from 
threatened ruin, for without such reform, will this happy 
government, as sure as the march of time, suffer the fate of ail 
others. 

With friendly hand I've held the glass 
To all promiscuous as they pass, 
If folly there her likeness view, 
I fret not that the mirror ^s true ; 
And vshould their guilty forms offend, 
I made them not but would amend." 



412 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

" Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, 
That, to be hated, needs but to be seen." 

If asked, why it is that my thoughts are so unique, and 
my objections so great to conventional customs and human 
authority, in ethical science, and matters of religion, I answer, 
that there is a silent and mystic power in the primeval forest, 
that awakes the soul to deep and solemn meditation, far beyond 
the vain and arrogant gabblings of men ; and here it was, in 
those voiceless wilds and slumberous solitudes, amidst the 
marks of former and ruined worlds, and the tombs of eternal 
ages, that my thoughts ran out and back through mouldering 
ages, upon the ever vasselating and impotent character of man, 
in his short and melancholy march from time to eternity. I 
have traced man's every thought, as will be seen in my article 
on sensation and perception, to their shallow and fickle foun- 
dation, and find that they inhere in nothing stable, but rise by 
the shifting breeze like waves of the ocean, then sink and are 
gone forever, except again awoke by the power which first 
created them, being as much dependent upon the circumstances 
that begot them, as is the effect upon its cause, or the stream 
upon its source. Thoughts are mere fortuities so far as regards 
any human power over them, each thought being prompted by 
its antecedent and sufficient cause, and that by a prior cause, 
and so on and on ad infinitum, there being not a single gap or 
broken link in the eternal chain of causality, the first link in 
the endless series being held firm and fast by the hand of God 
himself, the creator and primum mobile of all things. 

Both the intellectual and vital phenomena of man are forced 
states, nor has he any more power over his thoughts than he 
has over the pulsations of his heart, or the powers of digestion 
and assimilation, each being equally dependent upon external 
and antecedent agencies, not only for their existence, but their 
organic harmony and healthful activity. But as it will soon be 
seen, in my article on "Volition, that man's every act is governed 
by laws as pre-ordained, fixed, and undeviating as those by 



REVIEW. 413 

which Grod governs his vast and harmonious universe, we will 
return, for a moment, to the book of nature, God's first and 
glorious revelation of himself and of his eternal and immutable 
laws whence we derive all our knowledge of science and of self- 
preservation ; yes, and where the loftiest flights of imagination 
and the purest emotions of soul are enjoyed, far beyond what 
the arrogant pretentions and petty arts of man can bestow. 
When deeply buried in the gray old forest, and far removed 
from the unhallowed haunts and cruel persecutions of man, our 
thoughts left free from human excitements and the corruptions 
of party, grow deep, solemn, intense, and religiously just. Here 
amidst God's sublime and glorious works, and in those calm and 
tranquillizing retreats, we can meditate with an unbiased and a 
true integrity of soul. Let the student of nature cast off all the 
contemptible conventionalities of man and the virulence of feel- 
ing engendered by party faction, and reposing upon some lofty 
peak of our towering cliffs, view the scene around him. In stern 
and solemn grandeur stand the ruined ramparts of eternal 
ages before him, while their dark and frowning crags, flung out 
in dread array, threaten destruction to all beneath. Afar off 
is seen the towering domes of the everlasting hills, sleeping 
in the quiet sky, and onward yet, peak surmounts peak, till 
the blue outlines sweep off into the invisible distance. 
In the face of the moss-grown cliffs are seen the products of 
old ocean's oozy bed, and the marks of miUionary ages stand 
out in bold rehef, speaking volumes to the reflective mind, 
in regard to the dispensations of God, and giving the lie to 
vain man, who supposes God to have made everything for him, 
when whole families of beings have lived and died long before 
his creation, and when he has not an eye to see nor a capacity 
to conceive of but a speck of God's vast universe. 

The very pebble under his feet, which has been rounded by 
the rolling flood, carries his thoughts back along the lengthened 
vista of time into the unsounded depths of past eternity, whence 
with sad and solemn pace they may tread back along the me- 



414 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

lancholj shores of time, beholding on every side, the remains of 
former and ruined worlds, in the frames of organic beings, which 
no longer exist on earth, and far beneath the mountains ponder- 
ous crush, whole forests of the ancient floras of unknown date are 
DOW being disinterred for the use of man. The very crag on 
which he sits, is of submarine origin, and around him are seen 
to sleep, in their rocky tombs, thousands of beings that once 
had a life and a residence allotted them on this earth, as well as 
himself, and after all the vain and sacrilegious boastings of man, 
he has no more assurance of the favor of God, our common 
creator, than they, for if there be a God, and a just God, justly 
will he act towards all his creatures. But the dying sun has 
sunk beneath the western peaks and left his hectic flush upon the 
fast fading face of nature, symbolizing the dying soul that sinks 
from this stage of action to its grave, but as our glorious 
sun has gone to shine on other worlds and to rise again in un- 
dying and exhaustless vigor, so are we assured that the confirm- 
ed and undying soul will rise again to shine in the realms of 
eternal bliss. The shades of night fall thick around, and a 
silence as solemn and intense as that of death itself now reigns. 
No sound is heard nor living creature seems to move, save the 
owl and the bat that flit through the gloomy void beneath. 
The eagle is upon his craggy throne and the noiseless vul- 
ture has glid by on easy wing to his caverned cliffs. The home- 
bound bee has hummed his last lay, and the ground crickets 
low faint chirp is heard no more. The pall of death rests upon 
the faded scene, and nothing is heard or felt, save the pulsations 
of our own heart, every throb of which tells us that we are one 
beat near our destined end, and that soon, yes, very soon, this 
body must sink down to the dark abyss of eternal oblivion, 
and after being dissolved into its primitive atoms, will be thrown 
into the great laboratory or whirlpool of commingled elements, 
again to be parceled out by the plastic hand of nature, into new 
and unknown forms. And here it is, and now it is, that the 
upstart man, poor silly wretch, may have a crushing conscious- 



REVIEW. 415 

ness of his own insignificauce, and of the extreme pittance of 
his allotted existence here. Yes, here it is that the lessons of 
wisdom are to be learned, the illusions of hfe dispelled, and all 
things duly appreciated. But it is midnight, and nothing breaks 
the intense silence, save the doleful howl of the wolf, and the 
wild scream of the panther, commingled with the voice of the 
imprisoned waters that come up on the ebbing air, and seem to 
sound the sad knell of departed time. This is no scene of imagi- 
nation but one of reality, which I have often experienced, and 
as often reflected as T now do. With subdued and chastened 
awe, I have seen the finger of God, and felt that fearful power 
which has lifted those Himalayan piles of awful sublimity from 
nether darkness to the light of day, and in triumph thrown 
them to the very skies. 

But the sun of day, like the sun of our eternal redemption, 
has risen in resplendent glory, and awoke milUons of minds that 
slept, as it were, in death, to their active vocations of the day. 
He has shot his luminous and life-giving rays into the darkest pits 
and wildest nooks of the forest, filling the air with ten thousand 
wild odors, and making it vocal with the thanks-giving notes of 
the feather-ed songsters, showing unmistaken proof of the kind 
dispensations of providence, and of God's watchful care over 
all his creatures — " suffering not a sparrow to fall to the ground 
without his notice." • The early flower now opens its virgin bosom 
to the wooing zephyrs, and the whole face of nature is lit up 
with a joyous serenity and heavenly harmony, showing a govern- 
ment far above the vile and grovelling creeds, and the distract- 
ing and desolating domination of man. 

From this observatory of nature, the pupil may be — 

Led through, the rampart's time worn way, 
Mid ruin wide and old decay, 

And down through caverns deep and dim arcades, by dark 
owlet's nooks and old wizard's haunts, to the verdant and cool- 
ing grot beneath, where the forest is dark with the undying 



416 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

laurel, flowering shrubs, and floating umbrage that kisses the 
dimpling streams. Thence we might lead him — 

To -winding brooks and rivers free, 
That lave their way by rock and tree, 
Midst wavy hills and mountains blue, 
Where changing scenes are ever new. 

But after contrasting an object of nature with that of art, 
I will close this long preliminary. 

When once hunting in a deep and secluded glen hard by, I 
suddenly turned a point of rocks, and there beheld a young girl, 
just budding into blushing womanhood. She had washed in the 
brook and was combing her hair, as I approached her, and 
though startled as much as a timid fawn of the wild forest, she 
did not fly before me, but stood under the arch of a moss grown 
rock, from the base of which burst out a pure and purUng spring. 
Not having seen her father's cabin, which was hid by the dense 
foliage of the forest, I was as much surprised as herself, and 
whether the novelty of the scene heightened my imagination, 
in regard to her native charms matters not, as loving the works 
of God more than that of man, and nature more than art; on 
returning to camp, I recorded the following lines for the recrea- 
tion of my companions, it being enjoined upon every member to 
relate at night, the adventures of the day. 

There in nature's bower stood, 

A pure unsullied maiden bud, 

Whose modest blush and gentle mien, 

Would well befit a seraph queen. 

Her love lit eye and dimpled cheek, 

Impressed with more than words can speak, 

And to her beauty beaming face, 

Was added perfect form and grace — 

A model foot and agile limb, 

A tapered arm and waist so trim, 

With swelling breast? so full and fair, 

With ruby lips and raven hair; 

A breth of nectar and cheek all bloom, 

Who, that's a man, would not be a groom. 

For not in this case, as in what is called high and artistic 



REVIEW. 417 

life, would the cheek become bedaubed by the stuffing of foul 
chemicals from artificial faces, nor would the olfactories be of- 
fended by the fetid eructations from mid-night suppers and 
soured wines, more intolerable than the fumes of the city sewer. 
Ko emetics are here necessary to cleanse the stomach of the 
dregs of luxury and rid the brain of sick head-aches; but the 
fountains flowing free, and the air. with silicious purity, coming 
fresh from the fragrant pines and perennial forest; all is health 
and happiness. No loathsome exhalations or harmful damps, as 
upon our rich and loomy lands are here known, nor has the 
burgler's hand, the bloody sword, or the corrupting influences 
of ambition ever entered those sacred retreats and quiet abodes 
of innocence and simplicity. This is truly the unoffending and 
favored Eden of earth, and worthy of more regard that the ac- 
cursed Eden of old, which has eternally damned the world of 
mankind, and had Milton, instead of stealing from Homer's wars 
of the Gods, distorting his imagination and slandering our peace- 
ful God and his holy Angels in their disgraceful and doubtful 
fights with the poor old Devil, who will trouble no one either in 
heaven or on earth, that will stay at home and honestly attend 
to their own business, had have spent, his talents in depicting 
these blest Edens, and truthful and natural scenes of real life, 
his book would have been greatly more worthy of virtuous con- 
sideration. But some great Church leader has called him the 
divine Milton, and all must follow, with as much good sense and 
independent thought as is exercised by sheep, when, if the leader 
jumps into a well, the whole flock follows. There can be no- 
thing more insidiously corrupting to the youthful mind than 
those epic romances, that bring not only man in bloody struggle 
with man, but brings Gods by the ears, and makes a hellish 
Bedlam in the peaceful abodes of heaven, but such is the influ- 
ence of human authority, that heaven and hell may be made 
convertible terms — white is black, and black white, and both 
one and the same, as vain-glorious man shall ordain. Wars 
amongst nations, fillibusterings, mobs, duels, and murders of 

18* 



418 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

every damning dye, have their origin in the false inculcations 
from high authority of chivalrous deeds and of military glory; 
and the veriest laggard amongst the devotees of creed, has but 
to look back upon religious wars, crusades, and horrid persecu- 
tions, ill which the Devil had his fill, and then to recollect the reign 
of Knight-errantry and the prowess of maddened folly, to know 
that what I affirm is true. More than half of the heart-rend- 
ing scenes and frightful butcheries of the world, have arisen 
from the lawless maraudings and cold blooded murders of the 
inhuman Jews, as recorded in the Old Testament, since which 
time, every fanatic, particularly in the Catholic faith, feels that 
he has a sacred license to do the same. 

These are the fruits of example, and as long as we remain 
idolatrous, and look to mortal man for things immortal, will we 
be prone to yield to the ambitious and selfish schemes of erring 
man. 

With laws from God as light as day, 
In darkness still we grope our way, 
Involved in doubt by fool or knave, 
The free born soul is made a slave, 
And though to heaven often cries, 
With low bent knee and down cast eyes, 
No power i^has to see the fraud, 
That blinds it to the living God. 

I quote the following few lines from Tennyson, as correspond- 
ing with my own, above written. 

" Perplexed in faith, but poor in deeds. 
At last he beat his music out: 
There lives more faith in honest doubt 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

But we will return to the subject of these reflections, an 
object well worthy of the painter's pencil and of the poet's first 
regard. But then this Sylvan Goddess was not of the bottle- 
ended and fashionable form of the mother spider, nor of the 
bloated rotund of the green fly, but was a perfect model of 
God's own fancy, and with this taste of Deity, by the by, have 



REYIEW. 419 

our modern fashionables fallen out, as they have, with his humble 
simplicity in religion and all other things, and formed fashions 
and written formulaes for themselves. 

When parting with this lovely child of nature, whose eye 
beamed with a capacity ample for the highest human attain- 
ments, I handed her the following lines^ hastely formed with my 
pencil. 

Farewell, lovely maid, I shall see thee no more, 
Till we meet on the banks of eternities' shore, 
And then we will think of the Rockcastle cave, 
And the spring where we met in the evergreen grove. 

This was under the lofty cliffs and near the banks of the 
Rockcastle river, where all is dark with the thrift of vegetation, 
and where the " everlasting silence" of the rocks and hills have 
not been broken from the early dawn of creation, but by the 
voice of the huntsman's rifle, the horn, and the hound. In this 
Eden of God's own little innocent and unoffending Eve, nature 
reposed in her richest attire, and here, too, in the home of the 
wood nymphs and sylvan deities, did Flora come forth in her 
vernal robes, gemmed in the brightest hues and perfumed by 
ten thousand sweet odors, from her fair and blooming train. 
There was the grotto's cool and dripping arch, moss-grown and 
crowned with many a flower and flaunting woodbine. And there, 
too, was the gushing spring that flowed from beneath, form- 
ing a limpid rivulet, which glid sparingly on, till lost in the 
dense foliage of the overhanging and undying laurel, ivy and 
holy, sacred trees, dedicated in classic days to the god Apollo, 
and used as garlands to wreath the victor's brow. Yes, and 
then there was the voice of the cataract, that softly echoed 
through the imprisoned dell, the sweet chirp of birds, as they 
sported from bow to bow, through the leafy forest, the buzz of 
bees and the flutter of humming birds, as they sought the nec- 
tared flowers, which, added to the sighing pines that tuft the 
topUng heights and yield their fragrance to the passing breeze, 
rendered this spot, to a soul who can enjoy the sacred scenes of 



420 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

nature, lovely and charming beyond the power of language to 
express. 

The reader will doutless excuse these rhymings and erotic 
wanderings, when I tell him that ray motives are pure, and that, 
as I have a contempt for the dull, artistic, and mechanical rules 
of book-making, I have determined to boldly pursue my own 
free and independent thoughts, lead where they may, believing, as 
I do, that when the heart is right the head cannot be wrong. 
Besides, I think my course legitimate with the object and title 
of my book, and certainly greatly more pleasing and instructive, 
in the teachings of human nature in its varied phases, and illus- 
trating the works of God in their endless forms, than the dry 
and common place details of our schools and books generally. 

My resolve has been, neither to dack to the mandates of 
fashion, nor to worship the man who plays the fool, but to act 
with a firm and undeviating rectitude of moral purpose. I know 
that the cold, selfish and incensate heart, being corrupted by 
the fascinations of art, and immersed in the giddy whirls and 
amorous wiles of our nocturnal awakenings, cannot enjoy the 
calm and soft retreats of nature, and the life of artless simpli- 
city and innocence. 

Beginning with Adam, God's precepts have been spurned, 
and his original designs thwarted, by the traterous passions and 
arrogant pretentions of man, and it is by deserting the kind 
and simple laws of God and yielding to the dogmatisms of man 
that we become the victims of every wild delusion of fashion 
and fraud, and are led into scenes that vitiate the taste and cor- 
rupt the moral feelings, and prove, in the end, the mockery of 
all our hopes. For this dream of life will soon be over, when 
we shall lie down with our brother emmets in the dust, and care 
no more for this poor body, or its few fetid remains from the 
vermin's feast. From dust we came and unto dust we return, 
and as naked we came into the world, naked and without hoops, 
shall we appear at the judgment bar of God, there to account 
for the deeds done in the body, and where the chaff will be 



REVIEW. 421 

separated from the grain, and burnt as stubble. If such sepa- 
ration could be made here, the poor would not perish for want 
of fire, as there would be fuel enough to relieve the afflictions 
of the whole human family. 

Kemember, vain-glorious Dives, that thou hadst thy good 
things in the other world, and Lazarus his evil things, and now 
that he has his reward in heaven, thou art tormented in hell. 
" Before God, all nations are as a drop of a bucket, and the 
inhabitants of the earth as grasshoppers, yea, they are as noth- 
ing and are counted to him less than nothing and vanity." 
" No flesh shall glory in his sight." 

The resplendent and boundless empire of God in all its in- 
effable glory, may be unfolded to our raptured gaze, and the 
bigoted and narrow minded man of fashion and of formal creeds 
has no eye to see or soul to feel, while the inexhaustible riches 
of nature with the impress of the divine spirit may be display- 
ed around us, in the glowing light of heaven, and as blind as 
the mole of nether darkness are the craven devotees to human 
dictation and to vulgar prejudice. In short, the recondite and 
unfathomable depths of nature are only revealed to minds of 
higher thoughts and nobler feelings, that look not to the grovel- 
ling machinations of man, but to the fixed, eternal, and immut- 
,able laws of the great Jehovah, for their lessons of wisdom. 

More than two thousand years ago did Homer, Socrates, 
Plato, and Aristotle, with the powers of inspiration scan the 
arcane of nature, and leave to the world maxims, proverbs, and 
intellectual and moral codes of instruction which has never since 
been equalled. And the answer to this startling and omnious 
fact why, and how it is, that in the early history of man, and 
in a heathen land, the great intellects and brilliant lights of 
earth have been found, is plain. The Greeks did not take up 
all the early portion of their lives in cbnstringing the brain and 
dwarfing the mind, by dead languages and dry details of petty 
and local things, which serve only to make a pedantic display 
in our daily fairs of fashionable life, where the beau-ideals with 



422 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRATE. 

the butterfly's fame, worth and duration, will always find the 
modern belles in chase. Yes, now it is and here it is, that a 
few ready dimes will gingle louder and shine brighter than 
many pounds of solid and unostentatious worth; and hence it 
is that men of modern ambition, seek an education of brilliant 
embellishment, to the neglect of those great and eternal prin- 
ciples, by which we live, move, and have our being, and a want 
of which knowledge leaves us in darkness and doubt, in regard 
to the nature of God, of ourselves, and of the laws that are 
to make us happy or miserable through time and eternity. 

The Greeks, with minds far above such contemptible 
conventionalities, fluttered not with the gaudy and epheme- 
ral wings of insects, but soared aloft on eagle's pinions, and 
breathed inspiration from the higher spheres. The pupil, in 
early life, with a mind free aifd unincumbered by party creeds, 
and untainted by the frauds of men, v/as put to the study of 
nature, and God's irrevocable laws, by which all .things are gov- 
erned. And, now, with these facts before us, it is an easy 
matter to see why Demosthenes, the prince of eloquence, and 
the other great masters in every department of life, whose date 
was centuries before the Christian era, should have been so 
superior to our men of the present date. When Shakespeare, 
another student of nature, said there was sermons in trees, < 
books in running brooks, and good in every thing, expressed 
more than can be found in any whole volume of our modern text- 
books, where the astounding falsehoods and stupid accumula- 
tion of useless particulars, for ages past, are with great appa- 
rent learning and complicacy, arranged and doggedly drilled 
into the pupil's brains. Dead languages and special creeds, 
occupy almost the whole of the educational portion of our lives, 
which with the false and gratuitous assumptions, to suit the 
purposes of party, and the logical quidities and abstract subtil- 
ities based thereon, constitute the sum total of a modern college 
education, from which no moral improvement or practical good 
can ever be expected^ 



REVIEW. 423 

It is granted by Sir William Hamilton, the greatest critic 
of the age, that there has been no improvement in mental and 
* moral science since the days of Plato and Aristotle; and Comte, 
in his " Positive Philosophy," affirms that no one proposition 
in mind, morals or religion, has been agreed upon by writers, 
from that day to this, and it is as certain as that no number of 
falsehoods can make a truth, that no improvement ever will be 
made, till we abandon the ever vacillating machinations of mail 
and look to the eternal and immutable laws of nature as our 
guide. If the reader will look back into the history of man, 
he will find that men existed five hundred years before Christ, 
whose mighty minds still govern three-fourths of the human 
family, and if from this he cannot draw lessons of practical 
worth, he had better cease to read. 

Confucius, Pythagoras and* Zoroaster, were amongst the 
illustrious sages of that age, whose profound wisdom, and human 
and disinterested sincerity has given them a name that will last 
through eternal ages. Those consummate thinkers spoke not in 
dead languages, or unmeaning types of non entities, but in the 
universal language of the heart; and taught those primal and 
august verities of the living God, that lifts the soul far above 
the petty gossip and party struggles of this warring world. Such 
ultra mundane wisdom was not obtained from the institutions of 
man, but from the divine spirit which is everywhere seen im- 
pressed upon the works of nature, and there are none of the 
illustrious ancients who did not seek inspiration from that 
quarter. Confiicius retired to the silent and meditative forests 
and fields — Pythagoras, it is said, became inspired in the cave 
of the Cretan Jupiter, while Zoroaster obtained divine wisdom 
by twenty years solemn meditation amidst the awful and mac- 
cessible solitudes of Elbrooze. Demosthenes did not gain his 
irresistible powers of eloquence from dry and mechanical pedago- 
gues, but somewhat like Patrick Henry, whose soul was enlarg- 
ed and elevated by the natural scenes in fishing and hunting, 
for he had no other training till he came forth like a blazing 



424 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

comet, but he trained himself to the voice of nature and the 
bursting billows upon the solitary sea-shore. It is well known 
that all the Grecian philosophers, those mighty men of imperish- 
able fame, taught in the open fields; and Christ himself, resource- 
able as he was, often fled from the face of man to forests, caves, 
and mountains, and, indeed, the bosom of nature has been the 
sacred retreat, not only for the Jews, but for persecuted Chris- 
tians in all ages. 

Every intelligent reader ought to know, without the recital 
of those cases, that there is but one object of adoration, and 
but one guide to truth; and I only bring them up here so show 
their contrast with the grovelHng and slavish disciples of creeds, 
who succumb to the arbitrary rule of man, and to justify myself 
in introducing my readers to the simple and kindly instructive 
scenes of nature. And now, as I have proposed to give the full 
history of man, it becomes my duty to seek him in his every 
condition of life, and I am well assured, from long observation, 
that the larger portion of the misery we suffer, is from the 
disappointments of an undue ambition, and that there is more 
true happiness in the humble cabin than in the stately palace. 
Such is the reckless and criminal extravagance in the fashions of 
our day, that forty-nine out of fifty are unable to sustain the 
style that exists around them, and forty-nine out of fifty conse- 
quently become unhappiness. Nor is this vanity confined to life, 
but it is glaringly seen in the vainglorious paraphernalia of 
death itself, by which countless millions go annually to the 
grave, which with the smiling approbation of God might be 
made to sustain the suffering widow and orphan, for God must 
look upon those glaring marks of selfishness and vanity, with 
marked disapprobation. I ^ay glaring marks of selfishness and 
vanity, for would the body of a Lazarus, or other poor being be ' 
thus costly decorated. And more than this, a fashionable 
interment cannot take place, but by aid of the printer, and 
there is just as much pride and formality in a burial ticket as 
in a ball ticket, and if the invited party be small, our vanity 



REVIEW. 



425 



and family pride suffers; and hence the habit now in cities of 
hiring a train of fine hacks and mourners, in order to make a 
vainglorious display of great popularity and grief. Coffin makers, 
hackmen and priests, all know how to take advantage of this 
most rebellious christian custom In catholic countries, there 
are four marked grades- of burial distinction, the honors 
conferred being according to the amount of money paid. I have 
witnessed these ceremonies, with sad and melancholy reflections 
upon the demented and incurable character of man. For the 
lowest order, the coffin is set mortifyingly flat upon the floor of 
the church, the cheap and common candles burn dully, there is 
a pittance of holy sprinklings, and the chantings are short, 
surely and sluggishly dull. From this lowest state of degreda- 
tion, the corpse may be raised, by proper means, to the higher 
spheres of honor and of popular admiration, where the rich 
robes glitter in the tall and brilliant lights, and where, instead 
of a dull old pater and his little white-aproned urchins, adult 
forms in rich array are seen to bow in solemn majesty, and the 
divine display of holy orders, is looked upon with awe and 
adoration by the multitudes, who are governed more by sights 
and sounds than by common sense, and who have more confi- 
dence in the tricks of men, than in the voice of God. But be 
it so, for so it is in the history of man, who sees the abhorrent 
and startling deformities of others, yet cannot see his own de- 
fects. These are ungodly fashions of the day, that not only 
follow men to their grave, but pursues them through its dark 
portals and down to the fiery pits of perdition, and now, were 
we to serve our God instead of men, we should save the mil- 
lions that decorate our bodies for the flames, and also the mil- 
lions that it takes again to pray them out; which, if applied to 
purposes of charity, we should not only be Christians in name 
but Christians in practice, much to the relief of our suffering 
fellow mortals, and as I have said, to the smiling approbation 
of our Creator. If every man who dies, would take from his 
burial expenses, one hundred dollars, as I have done, and leave 



426 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

it in his will to some orphan asylum, what great good might 
we do, both in living and in dying. We should become the great 
physicians of souls as well as bodies, and we should moreover, 
rid the country, without the force and cost of law, of its lawless 
bands of vagabonds and cut-throats, who have been forced into 
the world, by the neglected and corrupt state of society, and 
being despised, because of their unavoidable misfortunes, and 
cast out from society, have become despondent and desperate in 
their feelings: by a law as fatal in the government of mind, as 
those in matter, which causes sparks to rise and water to 
descend. 

If we will reflect for a moment upon the endless outlets of 
life — upon those who are eaten by their fellow-beings, devoured 
by wild beasts, preyed upon by worms, consumed by fire, or 
buried in the deep caves of the bottomless and boundless ocean, 
we will feel more inclined to yield to Jehovah's fixed and fatal 
laws of mortality, and better satisfied to send our friends to the 
bar of God, divested of every mark of rebellious vanity. Be 
assured, my reader, that neither wealth nor fame, no, nor the 
pride of heraldry, nor the pomp of power, can avail anything 
in the decisions of our eternal destiny, which is fixed, not upon 
the pretensions of man, or the decorations of body, but upon 
the deeds done in the body. The remains of the poor savage, 
the simple child of nature, which cannot be attended by the 
rich plumed hearse and the sable train of our boasted style, 
will sleep as calmly and as safely in the hands of its God, under 
the rude log pen, where the serpent may coil, the fox make his 
lair, and wild beasts prowl around, as beneath the monumental 
piles of marble, or in whitened sepulchers upon the confines of 
the busy mart ; yes, sooner would I here sink softly into the 
arms of nature, amidst those voiceless wilds and slumberous 
solitudes, than to attempt to rest amidst the sweating toil and 
ceaseless din of the smoky cities. Give me, as more natural 
and in better accordance with our aptitudes, the green fields 
and purling and warbling woodlands and the refreshing air of 



REVIEW. 421 

heaven, as more pleasing in life and sacred in death, than the 
marble piles and paltry efforts of man, all of which are doomed 
to perish, while nature (the laws of God) must endure in fresh- 
ness and in pristine purity and power through the endless ages 
of eternity. The black banners of death were unfurled in the 
garden of Eden, and his pall has enshrouded the earth in sad- 
ness, in sorrow and in mourning ever since. Man and all the 
works of man must perish, and to know this, is the first lesson 
in the book of wisdom. Where is proud Babylon with its mas- 
sive walls, hanging gardens, and men of mighty fame ? Where 
Niniveh, Belbec, Tyre and Sidon, and where Palmyra, Rome 
and other more modern cities ? They have been swept, as it 
were, with the besom of destruction, while nation has succeeded 
to nation, like waves of the troubled ocean. Cities are now 
being disinterred upon every portion of our globe, where man 
has once existed and his arts been exerted ; but alas, alas, 
they are gone forever, and shall we not inquire why and how, 
and shall we not draw lessons of practical wisdom and moral 
worth from them ? 

The very principle in man's character that I have been 
above combating even to the very grave, has proven the mockery 
of all man's hopes. No sooner does Grod bless us with fortune, 
with fame, and prosperity, than we ungratefully abuse his gifts. 
We at once become puffed up witb our self-importance and with 
vain conceits, and forgetting not only the donor of such bless- 
ings and the author of our existence, but the object for which 
they were given — the relief from misery and want, and the hap- 
piness of all God's children. A tyrannical usurpation appears 
to be the universal result of prosperity, and as universally does 
oppression beget rebellion, rebellion anarchy, and anarchy dis- 
truction. We no longer look to the great God of the universe, 
as our common father, but become idolatrous, setting up gods 
for ourselves, even men and money, which become, in the end, 
the bane of our happiness, the opprobrium of man and the 
eternal destruction of his immortal soul. Pampering our appe- 



428 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

tites, we lavish upon our stomach every luxury of life, and upon 
our poor dying body, all that its debilitated and degenerated 
form will bear. We look no longer to the God of nature, but 
the God of art for all we want — the fashions of the day and 
the admiration of the world. Look at the chivalry, the fortune, 
and the fame of Greece, of Rome, and of Spain, and where are 
they now. The fragments that have not been scattered amongst 
the barbarians of the world are too insignificant to be classed 
amongst the civilized nations, and marvel not, for soon will all 
other nations of earth take their turn to the bottom of the 
wheel. Reflect for a moment upon our own happy government, 
and how many honorable men are to be found amongst the 
honorable members of Congress ? No honorable man will falsify 
or corrupt the community, and yet will politicians be all things 
to all men, corrupt the masses by offering the temptation of 
dissipation, and purchase votes at the expense of their constitu- 
ents souls. Where is there a man in Congress who would give 
twenty thousand dollars to elevate the whole community to a 
high standard of moral perfection, and yet there are many who 
have paid that sum to elevate themselves to a temporary, and I 
think, degraded position. It is notorious that no moral man 
can now ride the triumpLttut car of State, or enjoy the favor of 
the people, and hence it is that availability, and not moral worth, 
has become the watch-word and the governing point amongst 
political parties; and what is most grievously true is, that the 
greater the rascal the better the prospect. It is no longer as it 
was iu the early reign of our glorious Republic, when we stood 
shoulder to shoulder as one united family, and faught the enemies 
of human liberty ; but now our family is divided, and the greatest 
enemies to the peace and happiness of society are found in our 
own camp. The struggle is no longer against the common enemy, 
but against each other for the spoils — an eternal and disgrace- 
ful turmoil amongst the ins and outs for office, wholly regardless 
of the good of society and of the perpetuity of our happy Union. 
What, I ask, is to be expected of a nation, when the most un- 



REVIEW. 429 

scrupulous scoundrels and smartest trickers are esteemed as the 
smartest men of that nation ? Such a mass of corruption and 
load of sin requires no curse of God for its destruction, as from 
its own organization and internal cancer it must fall to pieces. 
All history shows, that whenever the sacred principles of truth, 
honesty and justice, are sacrificed to sensual gratifications and 
sordid interests, that that nation is crushed under its own weight 
of crime, and it cannot be expected that God will subvert his 
just and universal laws to save us from a greater load of sin, 
than sunk the den of Sodom. The curse of nations has ever 
been based upon the one universal trait of the human mind — 
the admiration of great achievements, it matters not by what 
cruelties or frauds obtained. 

I but recently read a particular account of Catherine of 
Russia, most unjustly called, even by Christian writers, Cath- 
erine the Great, when by the feelings of humanity and the de- 
cisions of morality she should have been condemned as a cruel 
monster in human shape, and held up to all future ages in 
terms of wrathful detestation. But such is unfortunately the 
taint and tendency of man to idolatry and human authority, 
that Catherine's cold blooded butchery of her husband, and her 
drunken debaucheries with her murderous paramours, have 
been suppressed, and she heralded to the world, in the face of 
God's holy and heavenly decrees, as the greatest of women. 

This case I give not as rare, for such cases are of daily oc^ 
curence amongst the rulers of men, but to show the principle 
that has been the downfall of all nations, and which is at this 
time sapping the foundations of our own government. Men, 
because of high station, and called statesmen, and rulers of the 
people, may indulge with impunity in dirty deeds and shame- 
less artifices, which would put a man of humble station in the 
stocks. We associate purity with power, and hence the doc- 
trine that the king can do no wrong, and that preachers, 
because their name claims a holy association, must themselves 
be holy ; and by the by, I but recently witnessed a trial where 



430 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

it was proven that a clergyman aimed to seduce a sister upon 
this very principle, by assuring her that two pure Christians 
coming together, could no more stain or tarnish each other, 
than two purely white handkerchiefs, rubbed against each other, 
could do. This sister, though young, was not quite so slavishly 
conj&ding in the clergy as most of members are, or the argu- 
ment would have been irresistible. We Protestants, and par- 
ticularly our clergy, pronounce the Catholics a priest-ridden 
set, when, in honest truth, I know no difference, for we are all 
preacher-ridden ; and particularly our sisters who, being kind- 
hearted and submissive to human authority, are too prone to 
look to man instead of God for their enjoyments in religion. 

Military glory, (that is the butchery of onr fellow-mortals) 
lordly magnificence and imperial power, has by all nations and 
through all ages been adored, to the neglect of their creator 
and his laws, from the ignorance of which they are ultimately 
destroyed, and I have only to refer the reader to the ancient 
cities above named, greatly more magnificent than any now on 
earth, and to emperors who conquered the world and wept, be- 
cause there were no others to add to their military glory and 
exaltation of power, for the fact. They are known no more, 
but by their fragments that have been torn to atoms and 
scattered over the earth. And oh, where is that power, and 
what was that power, which reared those mighty monuments 
of folly, the pyramids of Egypt. They have, like the builders 
of "Babel, passed from time to eternity, to be known no more 
for ever. And shall we hope, in our vain-glorious folly, for 
any thing better ? Our village has been turned upside-down 
for the last week by concerts, fairs, and other means of scrap- 
ing, together monumental funds, and in the last hour I have 
been called upon by two different agents ; one for means to 
rear up a fine new edifice for the education of young ladies of 
the better classes, where liot only foreign languages were to be 
taught, but logic, rhetoric, belles lettres, and many other 
things of the pedagogue's art and elegance, to the astonish- 



REVIEW. 431 

ment of the ignorant and old fashioned folks whose daughters 
are thus prepared for the intrigues of fops, whose education has 
been of the same high order of embellishments. Not a word is 
said in the long catalogue of stultifying studies, in regard to the 
instructions of the heart, the manner of rearing a family, or the 
means of providing for them, but the whole course is to pam- 
per the vanities of mind, already destructively too great, which 
fact I have, throughout this work, strove to show, by bringing 
up before the reader its melancholy history, throughout all 
ages. The other, a grave old clergyman, who doubtless acted 
conscientiously in accordance with the ambitious style of the 
times, asked for aid to pull down one of the largest and best 
arranged old colleges of the West, to build upon its ruins, as he 
said, a more modern and stylish house, "for such," said he, 
'* is the taste of the times, that our sons are getting ashamed 
of its old-fashioned looks, and I am sure that our sons have 
just as good a right to a fine college, as other men's sons, and it 
is our duty to furnish it to them." 

Now, these are not gratuitous assumptions and abstract 
teachings of human nature, such as you find in the books, but 
they are actual occurences of every-day-life, and though they 
may appear to the thoughtless as little matters, they are like 
little straws, showing the direction of the winds or sparks 
that might explode the world, if made of powder as the human 
passions are. One month's training of the youthful and tender 
heart to kind feeling, sincerity, and all the refining and enobling 
qualities of soul, such as may be had under the guidance of 
kind and gentle nature, is worth more here and hereafter, than 
years of vain and pedantic instruction in fine colleges, for just 
as far as God is above man, is nature, his works, above the 
works and arts of man. 

Luther's whole merit in the reformation, he brought about, 
was in his exposure of the clergy's pretensions to mystic learn- 
ing, and the people's slavish submission to their wily craft and 
sensual criminality, and for a time he turned the attention of 



432 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

the Christian world from the adoration of man to that of their 
God, and to the reading of his simple word and judging for 
themselves ; but alas, how soon did they again crouch to 
human authority and relapse, as before, into man-idolatry. 
These undeniable facts must convince every observing man, 
that, except a Luther arises from time to time, that the influence 
of man will become greater than that of God, and the soul of 
religion be lost, as it was in past ages. The condition of 
things above spoken of, becoming a grievance to the pious ob- 
servers of the church, there arose a John Wesley whose sincerity 
of soul, pious fervor and resolve of purpose, enabled him to 
brave the scowling contempt that was cast upon him and his 
humble followers, by the high, the learned, and the fashionable 
dignitaries of the church of Christ. Wesley preached with the 
power of sincerity and truth, against the fashions, follies and 
cold formalities of the day, and against the hollow-hearted 
and criminal expenditures of God's blessings, which are given 
for the good of our suffering fellow-mortals, and not to pamper 
our vain and sensual gratifications. This second Luther, from 
his great piety and zealous exertions, did much in lowering 
the pomp and worldly pride of the Christian church, but how 
soon, 1 ask the intelligent reader, was it, till sordid interest 
and sensual gratification placed the church again under a formal 
and fashionable hierarchy. The Methodists are now as fashion- 
able and vain-glorious a people, as any within the paL of the 
Christian profession, as far as their wealth and ability will en- 
able them to be, the Devil having again got the upper hand of 
all the Luthers, big and little. Next there appeared, in our own 
country, an Alexander Campbell, whose Millennial Harbinger 
was thrift with invectives against theological and pretended learn- 
ing, in the simple precepts and teachings of Christ, and above 
all, of milking the goats to death. He contended that without 
artistic learning and arbitrary license from men, every man was 
licensed, by God himself, to preach the Gospel, and do good to 



REVIEW. 433 

his fellow-men; and accordingly they did so, till by large ac- 
cessions they waxed strong and became vain of their power. 
And now, though opposed to theological artifice and juggling, as 
they call it, they found that they could not stand up against 
the polemic sophistry and subtilties of the scholastic pugilists; 
and, consequently, became ashamed, not of their pure designs and 
humble piety, but of their want of learning and of their old 
fashioned churches. And now it was that the Devil stepped in, 
as usual, and excited their worldly pride and ambition, by say- 
ing to them, that they had just as good a right to be fools as 
the more fashionable congregations, and the result has been 
that they milk the goats closer, and contribute more money, for 
the training of their leaders in the gratification of their sec- 
tarian ambition, than any class of professors in the United 
States. 

That these are items in the history of man, cannot be denied, 
and if the pious and humble Christian will ask himself, why it 
is so, he can find no answer than that Satan is still in pursuit 
of the children of God, and by creeds, competitions, ambitions, 
and enmities he divides the flock and cuts them off by detach- 
ments. I know that long training in logical and abstract sub- 
tilities, will give to the theologian polemic and persuasive pow- 
ers, but what of it, as there is no religion in it, as the Devil him- 
self exercises more efficient and persuasive powers than all the 
Divines on earth put together, for he certainly, according to the 
pulpit declarations of the day, bears off at least ninety-nine in 
the hundred of the human family. The only way to meet the 
eloquence of Satan, is to buckle on the simple armor of truth 
and justice, and thus resist his powers of persuasion, as Christ 
did upon the mount. My object throughout this work being 
to teach man his nature, and to point out to him that proneness 
in his character to superstition and idolatry, which has degrad- 
ed man below the dignity and high destiny of his immortal 
soul, and to convince the clergy of the necessity of humility, 

n 



434 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

brotherly love, sincerity, truth and justice, with the hope they 
may appreciate my labors and profit therefrom, I close these 
Essays. 

And now, may our kind and Heavenly Father, who made 
us and knows our weakness, aid, guide and protect us through 
life and save us in death. 



DEATH. 



Thought after thought, having already, added greatly to 
my intended limits, I should say nothing more, but my pro- 
gramme being, man from his cradle to his grave, the reader may 
expect to hear something of his descent to his fated and final 
resting place, beyond which we cannot go, for all is hid in dark- 
ness and in doubt. I shall say but little more than to warn the 
reader that death is certain and the time uncertain, and 
that he should, consequently, always be prepared to meet 
the event. We are born with the seeds of destruction within 
us, and we live through life under the irrevocable and crushing 
mandates of death, every birth adding one to the dead, so that 
at any one period of time, the past dead is incalculably beyond 
the present living. Every annual revolution of the earth, at 
this note of time, sends thirty-three millions of our race to their 
grave, thus vastly enlarging the bounds of mortality. 

There is a dread of bodily death greatly beyond the reality 
of death, our morbid imaginations making it dreadful. If we 
can believe the recorded statements of Doctor Adam Clark, 
and many other men of note aiid truth, the feelings of drowning 
are delightful and transporting beyond the power of language 
to express. In hanging there is not the slightest pain, the rope 
instantly checkin:^ the blood in the superficial vessels, in return- 
ing the blood from the brain, and the deep seated arteries still 
throwing it in, the man dies of apoplexy and without a 
pain, as struggling, or muscular action, is no proof of pain, 
in epileptic, hysterical and other violent fits, the patients, on re- 
covering, laugh and talk, and tell you they were not conscious 
of any suffering whatever, and such we know to be the happy 

435 



436 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

aptitude of our organic laws, that we, in old age, and in all pro- 
tracted diseases, as in cases of fever, for instance, we outlive 
those sensibilities, which wastes away imperceptibly, as does a 
candle or a fire from exhausted fuel. But be all this as it may, 
we know that the busy fit of life, with its hopes and fears, its 
doubts, its cares, and its bright illusions and blasted hopes will 
soon be over, and that death will come in some shape or other. 
At best, the joyous scenes of our early life pass our fading me- 
mories as an idle dream, and all earthly objects quickly pall upon 
our senses. Man is but a bubble upon the stream of time, a 
fading shadow, a flitting sun-beam. This earth is not his home, 
and in his rapid march to eternity, he hangs but for a moment 
upon the dials point, and then vanishes for ever. We soon 
find ourselves ebbing out from the shores of time and launching 
into the boundless and fathomless ocean of futurity. The man 
who was young but yesterday, is old to-day, and being deserted 
by the gay of an hour, who feel no farther interest in him, he 
may now sit down, and feeling and hearing his own muflBed 
heart faintly and slowly beating his funeral march to the grave, 
meditate upon his prospects for the future. The ten thousand 
objects of his youthful emotions, and the tender ties of kindred 
and friends, that time has twined around him, are at once to be 
for ever severed. New and untried worlds are now to be entered, 
and a final adieu bid to this world and all that's in it. If a good 
man, however, he goes with an inextinguishable life 'to the great 
Father and to Christ who died for him, whose eternal years and 
ceaseless joys shall be his everlasting inheritence. The Chris- 
tian dies but to be born to immortal youth and unfading felicity, 
weighed against which, this world, with all its wealth and 
honors, is lighter than a feather. The Christian need not fear 
death, when his faith lights up the dark chambers of the grave 
and guilds the empire of death itself, and when he can, with 
transporting joys, cry out with the sainted Paul, " death 
where is thy sting, grave thy victories." Death with the 
Christian is but a welcome messenger from the courts of heaven, 



DEATH. 431 

to bear him up midst the shouts of angels to be crowned with 
a crown of glory, and to be set down with his loving Saviour, 
who died for him and who holds him as dear as his own blood. 
O now, how happy in those blessed abodes, where there are no 
broken and bleeding hearts, whose foes cannot oppress him, and 
friends will not desert him, and where sickness, and sorrow, and 
parting, will be known no more, for ever and for ever. 

These are the revealed promises and the rational rewards of 
a true Christian ; but when the false Christian dies with a con- 
scious guilt in his breast, instead of ascending to heaven, midst 
the shout of angels, he has no hope but to be consigned to 
hell, midst dread tormentors and the howl of devils. The poor 
pantheist and atheist can have no hope but to sink down, down 
to the dark and fathomless abyss of eternal oblivion, a thought 
more repulsive than the active torments of hell itself. 

But here Mes the remains of a poor fellow mortal, whose 
soul has been summoned to the bar of God, to account for the 
deeds done in the body. These lips may have spoken soft words 
of brotherly love, and of sweet comfort to the afflicted, or they 
may have been defiled by falsehood, envy and malice. These 
hands may have worked in the cause of virtue and of humanity, 
or they may have engaged in deeds of damning dye; and these 
feet may have led to the house of mourning to minister to the 
wants of the widow and the orphan, or they may have led to 
dens of iniquity and *to scenes of sensual pollution. This body 
may have been that of an adored statesman, but it is all the 
same, for fate has put its seal upon him. Those eyes that may 
have beamed with intelligence, with love and with patriotism, 
are now forever dimmed. — These lips that may have spoken 
words of eloquence, which turned all eyes to the speaker and 
controlled the nations will, are now but lifeless clay: and this 
body, this walking miracle, that once moved with stately pride 
and conscious power, through our senate chambers, is now 
loathsome, gangrene, and doomed with the beast — to the 
revel of worms and to the vermin's feast. 0, what mute elo- 



438 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

quence is here — A sadly, deep and solemn scene — A book, yes, 
a book, a book, filled with lessons of wisdom, a book, worth all 
the books on earth to the meditative soul. 



Robed in white, he soundly sleeps, 

Cold in death, his silence keeps, 

His features shrunk and purpled o^er, 

His smiles have fled for evermore. 

His eyes are closed and leaded tight, 

His yaws tast shut with napkin white, 

His hands are crossed, his work in done, 

His feet are tied, his race is run. 

And now to the coffin his body is borne, 

And next to the grave where his friends sadly 

And gaze on the pit so dark and cold, 

The grave''s now closed and the tale is told. 



APPENDIX. 

I HAD thought that when I pursued man through all his dark 
and winding avenues of life and down to the silent grave, to 
have finished my task and done my duty; but it now strikes 
me, that I may write a short chapter more, with great advant- 
age to the living. 

I have abundantly shown, throughout my essays, that six 
thousand years of experience proves that no amount of theolo- 
gical learning, nor ponderous and puritanial sanctimony, can 
ever advance the cause of morality or add anything to the hap- 
piness of man. The party religions, manufactured in our theo- 
logical schools, and vended at high rates in our holy marts, to 
the demented masses, are but relics of the dark ages, filled up 
with high sounding variations to suit the guzzling gullibility of 
mankind for mystic things, who have found it easier to purchase 
religion ready made, than to obtain it by a long life of honesty. 
And in truth, it is a well ascertained fact, in those latter days 
of paradeful extravagance, that it will beggar any man to 
entertain a clear conscience against the ambition for sordid gain 
and wordly honors. Hence, it is, that we cover our consciences 
with a dark robed priest, or a cloak of hypocrisy, just as we 
soothe our cankered ulcers by a court-plaster. Some professors, 
by way of speculation, purchase from their holy fathers an 
indulgence, and make one hundred per cent worldly gain by the 
operation, while others, by way of honest trade, subscribe to a 
party religion, and thereby not only obtain the influence and 
aid of his club, but can be allowed to overreach his neighbor 
in a trade and chickle over it. His tythes may be thus paid 
and he become a thrifty member and shining ornament to his 

439 



440 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

creed party; while the man who has a heart of universal love 
and is consequently too honest to subscribe to any of the war- 
ring creeds of men, is left without support, save that of a clear 
conscience and the smiling approbation of his God, Men may 
cast him out, and dogs may lick his sores, not being plastered 
over by creeds, bat the God of might and mercy will receive 
him into a house, " not made by hand, eternal in the heavens." 
I wish to draw a graphic distinction here, which would to 
heaven, could be heralded by Gabriel's trumpet throughout the 
abodes of human habitation — It is simply and sacredly this: — 
That the man who has the heavenly sunshine of universal sym- 
pathy, love, kindness, humility, and forgiveness, is a good man, 
without the aid of creeds and church rituals; while the man 
whose malevolent soul is bloated with creeds and church formu- 
laes till he becomes satanic enough to broil his fellow man for 
an honest difference of opinion, as John Calvin did Michael 
Servetus, is a bad man. 

These are facts T aim to show the reader, and to convince 
him that creeds and sectarian hatreds have been the bloody 
daggers and revolvers of the church of Christ, to the cold 
blooded murder of millions upon millions of the distracted and 
fanatical parties. And though revolting to the sensibilities of a 
kind hearted and true Christian, we are yet forced to buckle on 
those deadly weapons, as outward signs of religion, the religion 
of our lowly, meek and lovely Jesus, whose tolerant and for- 
giving spirit, never persecuted or maltreated a living creature, 
and who felt for all mankind as common brothers, to be drawn 
by the cords of love, through kind treatment and pure examples. 
Christ's sweet and child-like manner of winning souls, however, 
is known no more by his ministers, who 

*' Preach a monster of such hideous mien, 
That, to be hated, needs but to be seen." 

God is not preached up as a father of kindly and forgiving 
heart, and as of equal, immutable and eternal justice, but as a 



APPENDIX. 441 

fearfully, jealous, partial, and cruel God, who has created a 
Devil and given him a hell to put us in. That from Adams sin 
down to Christ the whole of Gods children went to hell in mass, 
and that since that time near thirty three millions go annually. 
That he has interwoven sin and temptations into our very con- 
stitutions and given the Devil stratagems ample for our 
destruction. 

They say that 

All God's works haye gone a drift, 

And added much to Satans thrift, 

Whose kingdoms large and growing fast, 

And mast the world absorb at last. 

As in Adam's fall we sinned all, 

All God has sent to hell. 

Till time has added numbers great, 

So great no man can tell, 

Hells rooms, Lord, are jammed they say, 

Not one to let or rent, 

Whilst thou like churl art all alone, 

With kingdom blank, not worth a cent. 

Such things they teach of thee, Lord, 

And faith do many think, 

That thou dost wink at Satan's craft, 

And aid the dirty slink . 

The hen protects both night and day. 

With mother ■'s tender care. 

Her little brood from owls and hawks. 

And other beasts of pray. 

Then can it be that thou, Lord, 

Will yield to Satan's claims. 

When he ne'er hatched a chick himself. 

Nor fledged it for the flames. 

The reader must excuse me in these ludicrous doggerels, 
for as contrary as I feel them to be from my deep, solemn and 
sincere habits of meditation, they come forcibly to my mind, as 
the legitimate results of the doctrines of the day. The awful 
solemnity of the subject and my earnest intensity of feehng, 
would not allow me to say any thing that did not flow from the 
bottom of my soul, the fountain of universal love and ardent 
desire for the happiness of every creature on earth. Oh, what 
a happy thing it is in this world, to be a bigot and a strict 

19* 



442 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

sectarian with a heart of stone. It must be a consolation 
which I have never felt, to think that God is partial, and that 
we are special favorites of heaven, and that God has lived and 
labored for us alone, to the neglect of all others. My heart, 
on the contrary, is of flesh, and has become a wreck from its 
frequent meltings and palpitations for the woes and wants of 
others. Would to God that all party religion and all party 
and individual strife for property were done away, so that 
there would be no dogmatic cruelties and persecutions for our 
lowly and humble Jesus' sake, that we might have one God, 
one faith and one church, forming a perfect brotherhood and a 
paradise, on this, God's goodly earth ; that we could have a 
community of property, and all think and work to one interest, 
and for the mutual happiness of each other ; that war, murder, 
law-suits, forgeries, perjuries and thefts might be done away. If 
such be our nature that this cannot be done, may we not, o God, 
rid the Bible of its stumbling blocks to a true knowledge of 
thee and vital religion I That thou hast revealed a religion to 
man in mysteries not to be understood, in order to divide thy 
flock and lead them astray ; that thou doest wink at the 
wickedness of men and harden their hearts, that the Devil may 
get them, cannot be true. These words and thoughts, and 
many more such, are to be found in the Bible, and are not 
from thee, o God, but from men of bad hearts and of a selfish 
and false religion. I have a hatred, my heavenly father, for 
such things, so inconsistent with thy great and glorious cha- 
racter, as to drive thy children from thee. When a youth, I 
was surrounded with a puritanical influence that made me afraid 
to laugh, as it was read to me from Scripture, " Woe be unto 
them that laugh, for they shall weep," or words to that effect. 
ISIany other passages were quoted from time to time, to crush 
my youthful heart and blight the budding soul of life. My 
soul felt big with gratitude and desire to enjoy the blessings 
thou hast so bountifully spread around us. But alas, alas, it 
is with sad and melancholy regret, I say that feared thee, my 



APPENDIX. 443 

good father, but could not love thee, the Devil being represent- 
ed to ray tender and credulous heart, as more social and in- 
dulgent in innocent sports than thyself. More mature reflec- 
tion, my father, convinced me, that as we did not make our- 
selves, that thou didst make us, and fill us with those divine 
instincts said to be prohibited by Scripture. Then it was, O 
God, that I, for the first, that I had confidence in thee, drew 
near thee, and had pleasure in thy presence. The ten thousand 
times that I have since communed alone with thee in the 
silent forest, and amidst thy glorious works, have convinced 
me of thy greatness and thy goodness, almighty God, the 
maker of heaven and earth. 

And now let me say to parents who wish to enlarge and 
elevate the souls of their children to love for God and a 
knowledge of his wondrous works, to take them out of the 
schools of artistic and technical nonsense into the open 
forests, and show them the glowing heavens above and the 
green earth beneath. Convince them that God blooms in 
every flower and grows in every blade of grass, and that we 
breathe incense from every sweet zephyr that wafts around us. 
That all nature is instinct with divinity, and cries aloud against 
the slanders promulgated by men against the God of nature. 

We need not the spectacles of musty books to read God's 
natural revelation, for the book is open before us that every 
man, who is not prejudiced by a false education, may see and 
read the sacred truth for himself. If he goes forward with the 
bigots nut-shell soul and clipped wings, he might as well re- 
main in his dirty cage, for he cannot soar with the eagles ex- 
panded pinions from height to height, through mid-heaveqs 
pure and untainted air, and look with an eye of gratitude and 
adoration at the enchanting scenes around him. The worthy 
President of Centre College, to whom I have taken the liberty 
of dedicating my essays, is a noble specimen of one of nature's 
(God's) brightest ornaments ; for though he belongs to a 
church of creeds, his soul is so elevated and expanded by 



444 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

science, that he clearly sees the adorable attributes of the 
great and eternal Jehovah of the universe, and worships him 
in spirit and in truth, unswayed by party prejudice and by 
human authority. And here I will take occasion to remark, 
that though I have spoken of the clergy in many places, as 
being the authors of creeds and the dividers of the church of 
Christ, that I have a great regard for them ; and farther, 
that where I spoke of the clergy harmonizing for ever in a com- 
mon cause of filling the pews and increasing the tythes, that I 
did not impute to them any sordid or improper motive, in the 
spirit that moved them to throw aside their prejudices for the 
time. No, no, it is far from me and the kindly and benevolent 
feelings I aim to sustain, to doubt the hearts or cast odium 
upon any. 

O king of kings, and Lord of Lords, 

The father of all that be, 
With humble heart and love sincere 

We come, we come to thee. 
Thy children, Lord, through earth^s vast bounds 

Of high and low degree 
Will, when death shall let them go, 

All come, yes, come to thee. 

When fortune, friends and blasted hopes 

With all on earth shall flee, 
We'll come with hopes renewed, Lord, 

We'll come, yes, come to thee. 
And when the sun and moon shall Cade, 

And time no longer be. 
We'll dwell in immortal youth, Lord, 

Yes, dwell, forever dwell with thee. 



APPENDIX. 445 

I MUST ask of the unthinking and idolatrous portion of the 
community, to excuse me for my firm and unflinching belief in 
the unity, eternity, the omnipotmc£, the omniscience, the omnipres- 
ence, the wisdom and the goodness of God; as seen in the creation 
and harmonious government of his mighty works; and, conse- 
quently, for my unavoidable disbelief of, and mortal hatred to 
every thing that discredits, dishonors and defaces the virgin 
purity of our Christian records. Were I to hear a voice, pro- 
fessing to be from God himself, declaring that harlots, liars, 
rogues, adulterers and murderers, were favorites of heaven and 
persons after God's own heart, I would discredit my own senses, 
rather than believe that the great Jehovah of the universe could 
thus violate his own uncreated, underived, inherent, irreversible, 
immutable and eternal attributes. , 

The Bible, as Sir Isaac Newton and many other great and 
good men have said, has been " more tampered with than any 
other book that has ever been handed down to prosterity I" I 
am not the first, then, to affirm this fact, nor have I been the 
first amongst the millions who have been led astray by those 
odious stumbling blocks that obstruct the way to religion. The 
many things so glaringly and shockingly incompatible with the 
character of a wise and just God, gave me years of inquietude 
and unhappy reflection, and hence it is, that I do from the 
bottom of my heart, most solemnly and religiously protest against 
them, as calculated to produce open sceptics out of the Church, 
and doubting and unhappy members in it. I could never have 
found my God, after having subscribed to slanders recorded by 
man against him, and it was only by the glorious perfections of 
Christ, and the purity and simplicity of his teachings in the 
New Testament that I was saved from rejecting the whole sys- 
tem as an impostor, for the incongruous and abhorrent boluses 
prescribed by the priesthood, and crammed down my credulous 
throat, had poisoned both my soul and body, near to their eternal 
death. 



446 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

Let us here read what the Rev. William Paley, in his " Evi- 
dences of Christianity," ?ays upon this subject : 

" Undoubtedly, our Saviour assumes the divine origin of the 
Mosaic institution: and, independently of his authority, I con- 
ceive it to be very difficult to assign any other cause for the 
commencement or existence of that institution; especially for 
the singular circumstance of the Jews' adhering to the unity, 
when every other people slid into polytheism; for their being 
men in religion, children in every thing else; behind other na- 
tions in the arts of peace and war, superior to the most improv- 
ed in their sentiments and doctrines relating to the Deity. Un- 
doubtedly, also, our Saviour recognizes the prophetic character 
of many of their ancient writers. So far, therefore, we are 
bound as Christians to go. But to make Christianity answer- 
able with its life, for the circumstantial truth of each separate 
passage of the Old Testament, the genuiness of every book, the 
information, fidelity, and judgment, of every writer in it, is to 
bring, I will not say great, but unnecessary difficulties, into the 
whole system. These books were universally read and received 
by the Jews of our Saviour's time. He and his Apostles, in com- 
mon with all other Jews, referred to them, alluded to them, used 
them. Yet, except where he expressly ascribes a divine author- 
ity to particular predictions, I do not know that we can strictly 
draw any conclusion from the books being so used and apphed, 
beside the proof, which it unquestionably is, of their notoriety, 
and reception at that time. In this view, our Scriptures afford 
a valuable testimony to those of the Jews. Bat the nature of 
this testimony ought to be understood. It is surely very different 
from, what it is sometimes represented to be, a specific rati- 
fication of each particular fact, and opinion, and not only 
of each particular fact, but of the motives assigned for 
every action, together with the judgment of praise or dispraise 
bestowed upon them. Saint James, in his Epistle, says, * Ye 
have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the 
Lord.' Notwithstanding this text, the reality of Job's history, 



APPENDIX. 44t 

and even the existence of such a person, has been always deemed 
a fair subject of inquiry and discussion amongst Christian Di- 
vines. Saint James's authority is considered as good evidence 
of the existence of the book of Job at that time, and of its re- 
ception by the Jews; and of nothing more. Saint Paul, in 
his second Epistle to Timothy, has this similitude : ' Now as 
Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist 
the truth.^ These names are not found in the Old Testament. 
And it is uncertain, whether Saint Paul took them from some 
apocryphal writing then extant, or from tradition. But no 
one ever imagined that Saint Paul is here asserting the authority 
of the writing, if it was a written account which he quoted, or 
making himself answerable for the authenticity of the tradition; 
much less, that he so involves himself with either of these ques- 
tions, as that the credit of his own history and mission should 
depend upon the fact, whether Jannes and Jambres withstood 
Moses, or not. For what reason a more rigorous interpretation 
should be put upon other references it is difficult to know. I do 
not mean that other passages of the Jewish history stand upon 
no better evidence than the history of Job, or of Jannes and 
Jambres (I think much otherwise) ; but I mean, that a reference 
in the New Testament, to a passage in the Old does not so fix its 
authority, as to exclude all inquiry into its credibility, or into 
the separate reasons upon which that credibility is founded: and 
that it is an unwarrantable, as well as an unsafe rule to lay down, 
concerning the Jewish history, what was never laid down, con- 
cerning any other, that either every particular of it must be 
true, or the whole false." 

The reader will pause and reflect upon every word here 
spoken by Paley, who very justly says that Christianity is not 
to be sacrificed upon the altars of Judaism.' Mark his words, 
that " Christ recognized many — not all of their ancient writer s,^^ 
" and so far, therefore, are we hound to go." And, farther, 
" that it is an unwarrantable, as well as an unsafe rule to lay down 
concerning the Jewish history, what was never laid down concerning 



448 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

any other, that either every particular of it must he true, or the 
whole false." 

Just but establish this rule and it is all the Deist wants to 
overthrow our whole system of religion. Thus it will be seen 
that I have said no more of the Old Testament than the first 
Divines in the world have done, and were it not that I have a 
contempt for all human authority when the divine is open before 
us, I would give the reader many quotations of a more pointed 
character. 

But surely, surely, there can be nothing more asked, than 
for a man to be intelligent and honest, and to have the honor 
of God and the good of man at heart, in order to read and 
judge for himself. 



APPENDIX. 449 

I HAVE been most agreeably surprised, when having my 
proof-sheets read over, to find my multifarious views on so vast 
a subject as the character of man from his cradle to his grave, 
in its endless phasis, so well connected and the argument so con- 
sistently sustained. I know that I had embodied in every 
sentence thoughts worthy of serious meditation ; but having 
thrown these thoughts together from genial manuscripts, writ- 
ten at different times and in distant lands, just as I saw men 
moved in their veering character, as circumstances controlled 
them, and not having revised those sheets before they went to 
press, I am the more surprised to find that I have made a book so 
well connected and firmly sustained throughout, as to claim the 
attention of every reader, and cause him to inquire into his own 
character, what he is, where he is, whence he came, and whether 
he is going, and the relation he stands in to his God, and his 
duty to his fellow-man. My only object and highest aim was 
to throw out a few solemn reflections, to show to vain and idol- 
atrous man that God is the only source of immutable and etern- 
al knowledge, and that he should not, therefore, worship the 
vacillating and contradictory opinions of our erring fellow- 
mortals ; and in so doing, I have necessarily had to expose the 
ambitious and arrogant leaders of both of religious and poUtical 
parties. This, however, has been done in so kind, so sincere and 
so delicate a manner, as to avoid as much as possible the giving 
of offence to any ; but should any man with conscious guilt, ap- 
propriate what is intended for all evil-doers, without distinction 
of party, to himself, individually, let him do so, and thus claim 
the animadversion of all pious and impartial thinkers. 

My friends often say to me, " I know, sir, that religion has 
been much abused, and divisions, disputes, and hard feelings 
got up in the church of Christ, in consequence of the liberty the 
clergy take with the word of God ; but I would not for the 
world have undertaken, as you have done, to expose their er- 
rors. Why, sir, they will jump upon you like bull-dogs, and 
tear you to pieces." Now, if 1 know myself, I have labored 



450 MAN FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE. 

alone for the salvation of souls, but I must say that such silly 
and craven souls are not worth saving, when from a slavish fear 
of man, they would shrink from their duty to their God, and 
abandon sacred truth to be strangled by falsehood and the ma- 
chinations of ambitious and designing parties. Truth, immortal 
truth, has no more to fear from the low and petty quibbles of 
men, than has the everlasting mountain that rears its mighty 
form into the light of heaven, far above the frowning clouds, 
and defies the thunder's brawl. V Yes, but the clergy are men 
of learning, and have made those very points you controvert, a 
life-time study, while you, in your secular and assiduous pursuits 
of life, have never had one uninterrupted hour to devote to 
such erudite and abstruse subjects." True, but no amount of 
learning can ever bring pure water from a muddy fountain, or 
evolve truth from falsehood. Those gentlemen, I know, can 
draw wine and water from the same vessel, just as they draw 
contradictory creeds from the same book, and that they have 
all the powers of jpa/pal sorcery, and of abstract and logical de- 
vice, but these are like dew-drops upon the lion's mane, when 
exposed to the withering light of heaven, and tested by the 
immutable and eternal laws of the great Jehovah. Such 
mogic mortals, we well know from all past as well as present 
history of man, can wield the minds of their credulous and de- 
mented devotees, just as a boy does his top, and that 

" The}' a rope of sand can twist, 
Firm as learned Sorbonist," 

having reference to a learned theological school in France, es- 
tablished by the chaplain and confessor of Louis IX., where the 
clergy were marvellously trained in all manner of chicanery and 
tricks. But these ropes of sand, though they may deceive the 
dull and idolatrous eye, must crumble to pieces before the touch- 
stone of simple and sacred truth. Yes, and we farther know, 
that those great medicine men and magic rulers of the people, 
are book- worms ; but as the Rev. Isaac Watts says in his work 
upon the improvement of the mind, that " a mere book worm, 



APPENDIX. 451 

who dwells among books all his life, may have amassed together 
a vast amount of trash, and yet be a contemptible sort of a 
character in the world." Yes, man may worm his way amongst 
musty books, as do his brother mothes, but he can never become 
truly inspired and gain strength of opinion to soar aloft in the 
heavens and compete with the noble eagle, whose natural eye 
in an unclouded sky and under the glorious orb of day, scans 
the distant horizon. 

Those gentlemen, I mean the leading and warring schismatics 
and intolerant persecutors, who broil their brothers alive, have 
ever sought to make God the accomplice of all their crimes, and 
against the man who will not submit to hear his kind father 
and great creator slandered and mankind enslaved to idolatry, 
they not only threaten the vulgar prejudices of their blind devo- 
tees in this world, but they crush him with anathemas, and 
preach for him a hot, howling and hideous hell ; but they can 
never thus alarm one who has communed with a God of sincere 
love and of equal handed justice, as often as the author of these 
essays has done. 

And now, father, as we shall soon pass, yes eternally pass 
from this life to the dark and silent abodes of the dead, wilt 
thou, at whose quickening touch all nature kindles into life and 
into sweet and smiling harmony, rid our souls of their foul envy, 
malice and party-pride, and melt them by the influences of holy 
love, into one harmonious and undying brotherhood ; for if we 
give not to our brother in true meekness of spirit that love and 
forgiveness which thou hast commanded to be given in this 
world, how can we ask it of thee in the world to come ? And 
all these things being asked for by the name and through the 
mercy and intercession of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 
to him must be the glory and majesty for ever and ever. 



FINIS. 



1} 



m 



MOMENTOUS WORK. 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION, BEING 
AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE IN- 
EALLIBILITY, INSPIRATION AND AU- 
THORITY OF HOLY WRIT. By the Rev. 
John Macnaught, M. A. Oxon, Incumbent of St. 
Cliiysostoms Church, Everton, Liverpool. 12mo. 
$1.37. Mailed free. 

This work is more significant than any which has 
appeared since the advent of Strauss's Life of Jesus. 
The vulgar idea of the supernatural inspiration of the 
Bible is here abandoned ; and what is more, it is shown 
that many of the chief dignitaries, including four 
Bishops of the Church of England, have held, on the 
dy^ similar opinions. The citadel of bigotry, super- 
stition and intolerance, may now be considered as 
authoritatively surrendered. 

" It is the first book written by an Orthodox cler- 
gyman which decidedly denies the doctrine of Scriptu- 
ral Infallibility. It is well written and manly." 
Christian Inquirer, [ Unitarian^ 

From the Westmi7ister Review, 
" Distinguished by a fearless investigation of truth, 
an uncompromising hostility to deception and make- 
believe. Distinguished likewise by clearness of con- 
ception, closeness of argument, purity of expression, 
and completeness of arrangement. And unless intol- 
erance and superstition shall succeed in smothering 
the work, it is one which will exercise a wide influence 
— one which will give form and substance to thoughts 
which have been floating vaguely in many mens minds 
— one which will supply a rallying point, and become 
in lieu of a creed to those who are dissatisfied with tra- 
ditional and untenable theories respecting inspiration.'* 

Published by CALVIN BLANCHARD, 

76 Nassau St. New York. 



ROUSSEAU'S CONFESSIONS COMPLETE. 



THE COIST^ESSIONS OF JEAN JACQUES ROUS- 
SEAU. Newly Translated, without Omissions or 
Expurgations. 
Period First relates to Rousseau's youthful adventures 
to the thirtieth year of his age. 

Period /(S'tJC^Tic? embraces his literary and public career. 

Both Periods n^ake two large, elegant 12mo Volumes, 

sold separately, at $1 25 each, or $2 50 the set. Mailed free. 

" There hardly exists such another example of the miracles which com- 
position can perform." — hord Brougham. 

" There have been what purported to be translations of the world 
famous Confessions of Rousseau before ; but Mr. Calvin Blanchard's, just 
issued, is the first that we know of which is unmutilated and accurate." — 
Putnam's Monthly. 

" It has been translated into every language of Europe ; the librarian 
of Napoleon devoted a large volume to the classification of the difierent 
editions of it.- Evening Post. 

" Blessed be the early days when I sat at the feet of Rousseau, prop/ici 
sad and stately as any of Jewry. Every onward movement of the age, 
every downward step into the dephts of my own soul, recalls thy oracles, 
Jean Jacques!" — Margaret Fuller. 

The Confessions incidentally portray the remarkable 
times immediately preceding the French Revolution. The 
squalid wretchedness of the peasantry ; the gross licen- 
tiousness of the clergy ; the gallantries of the nobility. 
It introduces us to those famous philosophers, Voltaire, 
d'Holbach, Diderot, d'Alembert, Hume; to Mesdames de 
Warens, d'Epinay, and the enchanting d'Houdetot. But 
the heart revealings of J^ea7i Jacques are its crowning glory. 

Just published by 

CALVIN BLANCHARD. 

16 Nassau Street, N. Y. 



LIBERA.!:. book:s 

PUBLISHED BY 

CALVIN BLANCH ARD, 76 Nassau St., N. Y. 

(sent by mail postage free.) 

COMTE'S POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY, 8vo. pp. 838 S3 OQ 

COMTE'S SOCIAL PHYSICS 25 

STRAUSS' CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE LIFE 

OF JESUS, 2 vols. Svo 4 50 

FEUERBACH'S ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 12 mo. 1 .oO 

GREG'S CREED OF CHRISTENDOM, 12mo 1 25 

HOWITT'S HISTORY OF PRIESTCRAFT, 12mo 75 

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT'S RIGHTS OF WOMAN, 75 
VOLNEY'S NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HIS- 
TORY, 12mo 1 25 

VOLNEY'S RUINS, paper cover and bound 30 and 50 

TAYLOR'S DEVIL'S PULPIT, 12mo 1 25 

TAYLOR'S ASTRO-THEOLOGICAL LECTURES, being 

the second series of The Devil's Pulpit, 12mo 1 37 

TAYLOR'S BELIEF NOT THE SAFE SIDE 10 

TAYLOR'S LECTURES ON FREE MASONRY 25 

WHO IS THE LORD GOD.? By TAYLOR.. 30 

WHO WAS JESUS CHRIST.? 10 

WHO IS THE HOLY GHOST.? By TAYLOR 10 

WHO IS THE DEVIL ? By TAYLOR 15 

THE NEW CRISIS, or Our Deliverance from Priestly Fraud, 

Political Charlatanry and Popular Despotism 13 

THE ESSENCE OF SCIENCE, or The Catechism of Posi- 
tive Sociology and Physical Mentality. By a Stu- 

dent of Auguste Comte, 12mo 60 and 37 

HITTELL'S PLEA FOR PANTHEISM 25 

HITTELL'S PHRENOLOGY 75 

"WHAT IS TRUTH ? or Revelation its Own Nemesis, 12mo. 1 25 

MACNAUGHT ON INSPIRATION, 12mo 1 37 

VESTIGES OF CIVILIZATION, 12mo 1 25 

HITTELL'S EVIDENCES AGAINST CHRISTIANITY, 

2 vols, 12mo 2 50 

HELL ON EARTH ; or, an Expose of the Infernal Machina- 
tions and Horrible Atrocities of Whited Sepulcherism : 

together with a Plan for its Final Overthrow 18 

ROUSSEAU'S CONFESSIONS, Complete, 2 vols, 12mo. 2 50 
FOURIER'^ SOCIAL DESTINY OF MAN, 8vo....$l and 1.50 
HOW TO GET A DlVORCE ; together with the Laws of 

all the States in the Union on this subject 25 

BOCCACCIOS DECAMERON, 12mo illustrated 1 00 

THE LIBRARY OF LOVE ; 24mo. with engravings. The 
most exquisitely amorous and recherche effusions 
ever penned. Comprising : 
OVID'S ART OF LOVE, and Amorous Works entire, 50 

KISSES OF SECUNDUS AND BONNEFONS, 50 

DRYDEN'S FABLES 50 



^ 



Wisdom and Merriment. 



]\Iany a learned and wise (?) man has become in- 
sane, and (pity 't is) nearly all become, especially with 
the beautiful half of humanity, dull company, in con- 
sequence of not properly alternating the grave and 
weighty with the gay and light* To indulge in fun, 
frolic and merriment, is beneath their dignity. And 
so their dignity mopes through the world, disgusting 
it with wisdom, and sometimes horrifying it with the 
any thing but dignified maniac's yell. 

To correct this evil, I publish, along with works 
which exercise the intellect to its utmost, books, the 
tendency of which, is effectually to relieve the intel- 
lectual, by bringing into corresponding active ex- 
ercise the humourous, gay and mirthliil faculties. 

If the mystic claims that — 

" Eeligion never was designed 
To make our pleasures less " — 

the positivist cannot rationally claim less for deep, 
independent thinking. 

As to the pious libel, that licentiousness is an ac- 
companiment of free thinking, it is beneath my dig- 
nity to pay any regard to it ; and to be frightened 
by it, out of the least particle of fun, or natural, 
and therefore rightful enjoyment, exceeds my cow- 
ardice. 

CALYIN BLANCHARD. 

IHBD?9 




V •■•-• ■;v;';.v',v;iv>;v 







